Anthropic’s elaborate plan to keep Wall Street at bay

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Anthropic’s planned IPO raises questions over whether it can maintain its safe and responsible AI priorities.

Anthropic wants to have it both ways. With its impending IPO, it wants to tap the vast riches of the public markets and insists it doesn’t want to compromise its core mission of developing AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. But greater model capabilities bring greater risks, and shareholders eager for returns may have little patience for costly safety measures that slow products on their way to market.

Sam Altman, the CEO of Anthropic’s archrival, OpenAI, has cited investor pressures as one reason the company is not pursuing an IPO this year. Anthropic hopes it can resist investor pressures with a mind-boggling governance structure.

A “unique and complicated governance structure that has not been used before…creatively designed for this founder-led and mission-driven company.”

University of Pennsylvania law professor Elizabeth Pollman told The Verge that Anthropic has proposed going public with a “unique and complicated governance structure that has not been used before” and that has been “creatively designed for this founder-led and mission-driven company.” Experts say it should give Anthropic freedom to pursue profits without letting shareholders force it to cut corners on safety or rush systems out before they’re adequately tested. But even the strongest legal protections can only go so far, and no corporate structure, no matter how well designed, can completely insulate a public company from the demands of the market.