Just now, Anthropic has officially announced that it will donate 320 billion to be distributed to ordinary people.
Nearly 50 billion USD, Claude is about to distribute massive funds!
The very next day after announcing that "the Singularity has arrived", Anthropic directly set aside 5% of the company's shares to establish a public welfare fund.
Based on the $9.65 trillion valuation from the funding round in May, this 5% stake is worth 480 billion USD (approximately 3.2 trillion RMB).
This fund can be donated to public welfare organizations, or directly distributed to specific groups of people.
Moreover, every time the company's valuation rises by 50%, it can add up to an additional 2% of shares to the fund at its discretion. The faster Claude's value grows, the more funds it can distribute.
Elon Musk commented sharply: It is suggested that the shares be directly distributed to the public
On the same day, the first batch of 100 young people started their jobs with an annual salary of 85,000 USD provided by Anthropic. They are all newcomers who have just stepped into the workplace, and even those who have never written a single line of code have the opportunity to be selected.
The wealth created by every wave of technological progress in human history first flows into the pockets of a small number of people.
In this AI wave, Anthropic has first put forward a set of rules for distributing wealth, the more valuable the company is, the larger the share reserved for the public will be.
The Singularity Has Arrived, SI Will Generate an Extra 11 Trillion USD
The day before, Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, stood on the podium of the IMF and announced in front of senior officials of central banks from various countries that the Singularity has arrived.
According to Anthropic's own projection, once the Singularity arrives, the US GDP will be pushed to 44.4 trillion USD in 2030.
Without AI, this figure would only be around 33.5 trillion USD.
The nearly 11 trillion USD added out of thin air is roughly equivalent to two and a half times the GDP of Japan.
However, such a huge cake will not fall into everyone's bowl on its own.
Today, about 60% of the US economic output goes to workers, and 40% goes to capital. By the time the Singularity arrives, the share for workers will shrink to 45.2%, while the share for capital will rise to 54.8%.
The cake has grown by more than 30%, but the slice allocated to workers has been cut thinner and thinner.
Anthropic itself also admits that by then, growth will no longer be a problem, but the difficulty lies in whether these benefits can be distributed to everyone.
The day before yesterday, it calculated this account by itself. Today, it has taken out part of its own capital.
Jack Clark, who announced the arrival of the Singularity on the IMF podium, posted again this time to explain how the fund will be used.
In short, the goal is to let more people share the benefits brought by AI. And this commitment will grow together with Anthropic.
The Faster Anthropic's Valuation Rises, The More Funds It Distributes
For the initial 5% stake, once the shareholder vote is passed, it will be officially transferred to the fund. The fund is wholly owned by Anthropic, and none of the shares it holds can be used for lobbying or political donations.
This fund will also grow on its own. Every time the company's valuation rises by 50% above the baseline, the board of directors can add up to 2% more shares to the fund.
Judging by Anthropic's current growth rate, this rule will not only be triggered once.
In February this year, its valuation was 3.8 trillion USD, and it soared to 9.65 trillion USD in May, more than doubling in three months. The current market discussion about its IPO valuation has exceeded 2 trillion USD.
On the day when its valuation really rises to 2 trillion USD, this 5% stake alone will be worth 100 billion USD.
This is only part of the total.
The seven co-founders made a promise when they started the business to donate 80% of their respective equity. In May this year, they all entered the global rich list overnight, with a net worth of 8 billion USD per capita. According to this promise, each of them will donate more than 6 billion USD.
Coupled with the equity matching donation in which about half of the employees participated, approximately 20% of Anthropic's total shares are reserved for public interests.
In Silicon Valley, the more valuable a company is, the more stocks its executives get, which is almost an unbreakable rule.
The Tesla compensation plan that Elon Musk obtained last year was designed in this way. As the market value rises step by step, the stocks are unlocked batch by batch, with a maximum total value of about 1 trillion USD, all belonging to him alone.
Anthropic is doing the exact opposite. It wrote in its blog that the stocks that would have been awarded to executives are now allocated to public interests.
With the same set of unlocking rules, the recipient of the stocks has changed from the CEO to the whole society.
Every time one more person pays 20 USD to subscribe to Claude Pro, every time one more company entrusts its work to Claude Code, Anthropic becomes a little more valuable, and this fund will also grow accordingly.
AI Dividend Is Coming, 140 USD Per Capita?
This month, residents in Alaska just received 1200 USD per person.
This money comes from the oil extracted from the ground. The profits from oil are deposited into a fund, and the returns are distributed to every resident, it has not been interrupted since 1982, and has been issued for 44 consecutive years.
Distributing the profits from AI to everyone in this way was calculated by Altman 5 years ago. Ten years later, each adult in the United States will receive about 13,500 USD per year. In July this year, OpenAI also proposed to set aside 5% of its shares.
Ordinary people also expect this. In a poll in January this year, 65% of Americans believe that everyone should get a share of the profits earned by AI companies.
While everyone is still debating and making proposals, Anthropic has already taken action.
It wrote in its blog that AI can create huge wealth, but it may also make the lives of many workers unstable.
It has already invested 200 million USD in research and response to this issue, but given the current development speed of AI, more bold measures may be needed. This fund is prepared for these solutions.
The boldest one is "directly distribute funds to specific groups of people". Andrew Curran, an AI content creator, noticed this sentence at a glance.
He believes that Anthropic is about to launch a global version of universal basic income on its own.
But if the funds are to be equally distributed to everyone, nearly 500 billion USD divided equally among 340 million Americans will only get a little over 140 USD per person. If divided among 8 billion people around the world, each person will only get 6 USD.
So who exactly will get this money?
The official answer is hidden in the phrase "specific groups of people". The funds will not be equally distributed to everyone, but will be issued to a selected group of people first.
Today, Claude Starts Paying Salaries to Young People
This batch of young people who just started work today have received support from Anthropic in advance: a job with an annual salary of 85,000 USD.
This salary comes from another program — Claude Corps. In June this year, Anthropic allocated 150 million USD at one go to launch this project.
Now, the first batch of 100 members have officially taken up their positions, and the program has begun to be implemented.
The threshold is surprisingly low, anyone over the age of 18 can sign up, no academic qualification is required, and even people who have never written code can apply. Selected participants will be sent to public welfare institutions such as food banks and marine conservation organizations across the United States to work for one full year.
After one year, each participant will have at least one project that they have completed from start to finish, and they can decide their own next career path. In total, three batches will recruit 1,000 people.
The reason why Anthropic is willing to invest such a huge sum of money is that the tide of the era first impacts itself.
According to the survey it released last Friday, its own employees on average believe that AI will be able to complete 75% of their work by 2030.
In another report on the same day, although the company is still expanding its recruitment, the proportion of new entrants among the newly recruited technical positions has dropped from 27% to 9%.
Simple tasks are all taken over by AI, so where should young people accumulate their first work experience? Claude Corps is designed to fill this gap.
In February this year, Anthropic just made a decision that it will bear the increased electricity bills caused by its own data centers, and will not pass the cost on to ordinary power users.
Paying salaries and bearing electricity bills are just warm-ups. The fund launched in the early morning of today is more than 300 times larger than the previous programs.