My understanding is that for most of Anthropic’s existence (though this is no longer true), there was an option when you joined to pledge some fraction of your equity (up to 50%) to give to non-profits, and then Anthropic would match that 3:1.
This is an unusually strong incentive to pledge a bunch of money to charity up-front, and of course the 3x-ing of that money will straightforwardly bring up the amount of money donated. I think this pledge is legally binding, because of the equity already having been transferred to a DAF. But I’m not confident in that, and it’d be good to get that confirmed.
(I’d also be interested to hear vibes-y estimate from anthropic employees about how many people took that deal.)
Also, all of the Anthropic founders pledged to donate 80% of their equity, according to Zach here, second-hand from an Anthropic person. (Though apparently this pledge is not legally binding.) Forbes estimates 7 Anthropic cofounders to be worth $3.7B each.
So I think way more than $1B is set-aside for donating (and that this will be increasing, because I expect Anthropic’s valuation to increase).
That said, I am pretty worried that giving away large amounts of money requires a bunch of thinking, that Anthropic employees will be very busy, and that a lot of them might procrastinate their donation decisions until the singularity has come and gone. Empirically, it’s common for billionaires to pledge a bunch of money to charity and then be very slow at giving it away.
Probably that risk is at least somewhat sensitive to how many obviously good donation opportunities there are that can absorb a lot of money.
My understanding is that for most of Anthropic’s existence (though this is no longer true), there was an option when you joined to pledge some fraction of your equity (up to 50%) to give to non-profits, and then Anthropic would match that 3:1.
This is an unusually strong incentive to pledge a bunch of money to charity up-front, and of course the 3x-ing of that money will straightforwardly bring up the amount of money donated. I think this pledge is legally binding, because of the equity already having been transferred to a DAF. But I’m not confident in that, and it’d be good to get that confirmed.
(I’d also be interested to hear vibes-y estimate from anthropic employees about how many people took that deal.)
Also, all of the Anthropic founders pledged to donate 80% of their equity, according to Zach here, second-hand from an Anthropic person. (Though apparently this pledge is not legally binding.) Forbes estimates 7 Anthropic cofounders to be worth $3.7B each.
So I think way more than $1B is set-aside for donating (and that this will be increasing, because I expect Anthropic’s valuation to increase).
That said, I am pretty worried that giving away large amounts of money requires a bunch of thinking, that Anthropic employees will be very busy, and that a lot of them might procrastinate their donation decisions until the singularity has come and gone. Empirically, it’s common for billionaires to pledge a bunch of money to charity and then be very slow at giving it away.
Probably that risk is at least somewhat sensitive to how many obviously good donation opportunities there are that can absorb a lot of money.