Anthropic's $2T IPO Reveals External Trustees' Power

Anthropic's push toward a $2 trillion public listing is forcing a hard look at who actually runs the company once its stock starts trading. The AI lab behind Claude has built its governance around a body called the Long-Term Benefit Trust, a small panel of outside advisers with no financial stake in the business but with the power to name and remove most of its board. That arrangement, unusual for a company about to sell shares to the public, is now drawing attention from investors who will have real money on the line but no equivalent say over who sits in the boardroom.

The trust currently has three members, chaired by Neil Buddy Shah of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, with former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and Center for a New American Security head Richard Fontaine rounding out the group. It has already picked four of Anthropic's seven directors, among them Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan. San Francisco-based Anthropic has said it intends to keep this structure intact after going public, betting that the trust's mandate to prioritize humanity's long-term interests over shareholder returns can survive contact with Wall Street.