Anthropic cofounders pledged 80% of equity to charity — 'trillion-dollar or zero-dollar company'
kevinroose · x · 2026-10-19
Kevin Roose shares an anecdote from his new book: Dario Amodei required all Anthropic cofounders to sign a giving pledge donating at least 80% of their equity to charity, to ensure personal profits never came before the safety mission. EA-aligned founders like Chris Olah didn't mind, but Jack Clark considered bargaining down to 50% — until Tom Brown told him it wasn't worth the fight since "this will either be a trillion-dollar company or a zero-dollar company." Roose adds: if Anthropic and OpenAI each go public at $1T (probably conservative), that's roughly $460 billion — about 5 Gates Foundations — earmarked for philanthropy.
Related event: Dario Amodei Once Urged Co-founders to Donate 80% of Anthropic Equity(2 posts)→
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