Anthropic成立于2021年，旨在确保人类能够控制AI，并长期从中获益。 然而，随着边境实验室接近其最初的公开供货，有一类人类正在失去控制：任何在公共市场上持有收购股票的人。
复杂的结构允许创始人如埃隆·穆斯克或马克·扎克伯格在不拥有大部分的情况下控制自己的公共公司，这在硅谷并不新鲜。 但Anthropic对AI安全的迷恋导致公司管理真正巴洛克式的风格，让共同的股东对AI公司的大多数重大决策，包括谁在董事会任职，几乎没有发言权。
首先，Anthropic是一家公益公司——一个合法允许在利润的同时权衡公共使命的盈利公司——目的是促进AI安全。 这种地位保护了董事会就AI安全做出决策的能力
目前，董事会由Anthropic总裁Daniela Amodei担任主席，成员包括CEODario Amodei(她的兄弟),Netflix联合创始人Reed Hastings，前Microsoft和GM CFO Christopher Liddell，诺华首席执行官Vas Narasimhan，以及火种资本合伙人Yasmin Razavi. 董事会有一个空缺。
第二，Anthropic将其董事会的重要控制权分配给一个长期福利信托基金(LTBT)，这是一个独立小组，旨在保持该公司专注于为人类造福的使命。 该信托拥有一类股票，使其有能力选举和取消公司董事会的大多数，称为Class T董事。 LTBT由全球卫生专家尼尔·沙阿(Neil Shah)担任主席，他当时是Givewell公司(GiveWell)的总裁，该公司是慈善机构排名的非营利组织，成员包括前联邦储备委员会主席本·伯南克(Ben Bernanke)，国家安全专家理查德·方丹(Richard Fontaine)和哈佛物理学家克里斯托弗·斯图布斯(Christopher Stubbs). LTBT现在有一个空缺现有成员将自行选择由谁填补。
第三，Anthropic的七位创始人还共同拥有一个特殊类别的股票，这些股票给予其中的多数股东50.1%的表决权，允许他们选出三名董事会成员。 如果无论出于什么原因，创始人中没有多数，那么只有这样，他们的股份才能按照共同股票持有者的比例投票。
最后，董事会可以对LTBT进行检查。 当LTBT提名其四位董事之一的“指定”或无故撤换该董事(即不指控不当行为)时，董事会的提名委员会可以拒绝批准这一举动并将决定提交公司雇员投票。
情况如下：
这种复杂结构的动态难以预测。 OpenAI的所谓blip，当时OpenAI的董事会曾短暂解雇CEOSam Altman，由于公司员工对阿尔特曼的忠诚，董事会支持，恢复了他，并建立了一个新的治理结构。 兹Q 1Z的结构似乎将这种雇员权力正规化。
在Anthropic，创始人统一战线的裂痕可能导致共同股东拥有比预期更多的发言权，而雇员如果将LTBT背对集合的灯光机，则可以推翻机上LTBT的席位。
创始人的控制权不会永远持续下去：IPO成立十年后，创始人可以选择结束对公司的控制，或者当其中不到三个人留下时，他们的控制会自动结束。 此时，LTBT将持续到85%的普通股东投票决定结束，否则会经董事会批准决定下台。
如果和当这两个股东类别都不再存在——但愿不是由于AI驱动的灾难——共同股东最终获得控制权。
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Anthropic was founded in 2021 to ensure humanity can control AI and benefit from it in the long-term. As the frontier lab approaches its initial public offering, however, there’s one class of humanity that is being shut out of control: anyone who buys its stock on public markets.
Complex structures that allow founders like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to control their public companies without owning most of them are nothing new in Silicon Valley. But Anthropic’s obsession with AI safety has resulted in a truly baroque style of corporate governance that will leave common shareholders with little say over most major decisions at the AI company, including who sits on its board.
First, Anthropic is a public benefit company — a for-profit corporation legally allowed to weigh a public mission alongside profit — with the goal of promoting AI safety. That status protects the board’s ability to make decisions about AI safety that aren’t driven entirely by shareholder value without being sued by angry investors.
Right now, the board is chaired by Anthropic president Daniela Amodei and includes CEO Dario Amodei (her brother), Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, former Microsoft and GM CFO Christopher Liddell, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan, and Spark Capital partner Yasmin Razavi. There is one vacancy on the board.
Second, Anthropic has allocated significant control of its board to a Long Term Benefit Trust (LTBT), an independent panel meant to keep the company focused on mission to benefit humanity. The trust owns a class of stock that gives it the ability to elect and remove a majority of the company’s board, known as Class T directors. The LTBT is chaired by Neil Shah, a global health expert who was managing director at GiveWell, a nonprofit that ranks charities, and includes former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, national security expert Richard Fontaine, and Harvard physicist Christopher Stubbs. There is one vacancy on the LTBT right now. The existing members will themselves choose who fills it.
Third, Anthropic’s seven founders also jointly own a special class of stock that gives a majority of them an 50.1% of shareholder voting power, allowing them to elect three members of the board of directors. If, for whatever reason, there’s no majority among the founders, only then are their shares voted in proportion with holders of common stock.
Finally, the board can put a check on the LTBT. When the LTBT nominates a “Specified” one of its four directors, or removes that director without cause (that is, without alleging misconduct), the board’s nominating committee can decline to approve the move and throw the decision to the company’s employees for a vote.
Here’s what all that looks like:
The dynamics of such a complex structure are hard to predict. We’ve already seen one notable instance where a similar structure was essentially overthrown: OpenAI’s so-called blip, when OpenAI’s board briefly fired CEO Sam Altman over concerns that he was not being candid with them. Thanks to the loyalty of the company’s employees to Altman, the board backed down, reinstated him, and a new governance structure was put in place. Anthropic’s structure seems to formalize that kind of employee power.
At Anthropic, cracks in the founders’ unified front could lead to common shareholders having more say than expected, while employees can overrule the LTBT on board seats if they back the board over the assembled luminaries.
The founders’ control won’t last forever: Ten years after the IPO, the founders can choose to end their control of the company, or their control will end automatically when fewer than three of them remain. At that point, the LTBT will continue until 85% of common shareholders vote to end it, or it decides to step down with approval from the board.
If and when neither special class of shareholder exists any more — hopefully not because of an AI-driven catastrophe — common shareholders finally get control.
Auto-fetched and translated by AI Atlas. All rights belong to the original author.