Billionaire Elon Musk promised to distribute a share of his SpaceX company to “every child in the United States” next year. The promise was made after the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic announced, in a post on social media, that it would allocate 5% of its shares to a new fund of “public benefit.”
In response to Sunday’s post, Musk wrote: “I recommend giving the shares directly to the public.”
Anthropic said on Sunday that the shares designated for the initiative would be transferred to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new entity within the company. The value of the fund could increase as the shares appreciate.
Musk did not provide further details on how he plans to execute the distribution of the shares, but added in his post: “This will be the first of many.”
The announcements by Musk and Anthropic come at a time of growing concern among Americans about artificial intelligence.
A new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that the majority of Americans, 64%, believe AI is developing “too fast,” while 27% assess that its progress is “at the right pace,” and only 8% believe the technology is evolving “too slowly.”
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, and the other five co-founders established the company as a public benefit corporation, a legal form that allows for-profit companies to balance financial goals and social impact.
Anthropic plans to carry out a major IPO as early as November. In June, the company said it had filed a confidential registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its proposed initial public offering.
In that same month, Musk’s SpaceX debuted on Wall Street as a publicly traded company, making the entrepreneur the world’s first trillionaire. SpaceX will report its quarterly results on Tuesday.
