What do you do when you think your company’s technology may fundamentally alter the fabric of the economy—or rend it apart entirely?

Anthropic, which is widely rumored to be approaching a record-setting IPO, apparently has an answer: Cut the public in on a piece of whatever comes next.

Last week, the company announced that it would dedicate 5% of its shares to a company-owned public benefit trust.

If Anthropic’s products are as lucrative as its sky-high valuation suggests, those shares could be worth billions on day one—and could grow to be worth hundreds of billions over time.

By my calculations, if Google had done the same thing before its 2004 IPO, the shares it set aside for the good of humanity would be worth $184 billion today.

So Anthropic’s plan is a bold one. Depending on where you sit, you’ll likely see it either as a genuine effort to give back to the world, or an attempt to shake regulators off the company’s back—or stop pitchfork-wielding mobs from storming its lovely new office building in SoMA if things get really bad.

And though the scale is unprecedented, it’s not a new idea. In fact, Anthropic was beaten to the punch by a movie star turned salad dressing tycoon. 

By age 57, actor Paul Newman was doing pretty well for himself . He had starred in almost 50 movies—including classics like Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid —and was on the path to an eventual Oscar.

Source link