Latest / Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts / Anthropic Promised 5% of Itself to a Fund It Controls. A Day Later Musk Promised Every Kid in America One SpaceX Share, Worth About $146

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Anthropic Promised 5% of Itself to a Fund It Controls. A Day Later Musk Promised Every Kid in America One SpaceX Share, Worth About $146 · Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

• 0:00
  [Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, the show where the people who own the robots started handing out slices. The Associated Press reported on Monday that Elon Musk will give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year, one day after Anthropic promised five percent of itself to a new public benefit fund.
• 0:18
  [Guest] Two of the biggest names in AI, back to back, each saying the public gets a piece of the machines. Anthropic's post went up Sunday, Musk replied underneath it, and by Monday morning he had a pledge of his own.
• 0:32
  [Host] I have two kids. Is this real money, or a press release?
• 0:35
  [Guest] Start with the number you can check. SpaceX closed at a hundred forty-six dollars a share on Friday, so that is what each of your kids would get, in a stock the AP says is down a third from its peak after the June listing.
• 0:50
  [Host] The Treasury just opened those new Trump Accounts for millions of kids with a thousand dollars each, didn't it?
• 0:57
  [Guest] It did, this month, as Fortune points out, so Musk's share is a fraction of what the government already deposited. His post has no mechanism and no date beyond next year, though he did add that this would be the first of many.
• 1:11
  [Host] One share for every kid in America sounds enormous. What does it cost him?
• 1:15
  [Guest] About ten and a half billion dollars at Friday's price, which Fortune says barely dents his holdings. He gives up a rounding error.
• 1:23
  [Host] And Anthropic's five percent, what is that worth, and who gets it?
• 1:27
  [Guest] Five percent of a company hoping to list next month at more than a trillion dollars. Who gets it is nobody yet, and that is the whole story. Anthropic's post says the fund could make large donations to nonprofits or, in its words, direct distributions to specific populations, with job loss from AI named as one reason. No amount and no start date.
• 1:48
  [Host] Specific populations. Does that mean the people whose jobs the model took?
• 1:52
  [Guest] It doesn't say. The post notes the company has already paid to study that problem and that bolder approaches may be needed. Who decides is the missing part, and Anthropic says the governance comes in the coming months.
• 2:04
  [Host] Who holds the shares in the meantime?
• 2:07
  [Guest] Anthropic does. The fund is a limited liability company wholly owned by the company, not a charity with its own board. The first five percent needs stockholder approval, and any top-up as the valuation climbs is at the board's discretion.
• 2:20
  [Host] So the shares go from the company to a company it owns, and the shareholders get a vote on it before anyone else does?
• 2:28
  [Guest] That's the structure on paper. Anthropic's own framing was pointed: tech companies usually hand escalating stock awards to executives, and it is directing that equity to the public instead. The money that would have been a bonus pool is now a benefit pool, same building.
• 2:43
  [Host] Why announce it on a Sunday, a few weeks before the listing?
• 2:47
  [Guest] Lise Buyer, an adviser who preps companies for stock listings, told CNBC the timing is partly mandatory housekeeping before a listing, and partly image. She said it is also to burnish their reputation at a time when AI is coming under significant scrutiny.
• 3:01
  [Host] And Musk's reply was, cut out the middleman?
• 3:03
  [Guest] He wrote under Anthropic's post that he recommends giving the shares directly to the public, then added that this is what he will be doing. Notice what that skips: no fund, no board, no vote, just a transfer from one man's account, which also means nothing but his word holds it.
• 3:20
  [Host] Fine, say both go through. My kids own SpaceX and a fund sends money to people AI displaced, isn't a slice of the upside exactly what everyone's been asking for?
• 3:30
  [Guest] A share is one thing, a claim on the company's profit. It isn't a vote, since Musk keeps control of SpaceX either way, and it isn't the product getting cheaper. A share pays out when the company charges more, not less.
• 3:44
  [Host] So if that fund ever pays a displaced worker, where did the money come from, the rest of us paying for the thing that displaced them?
• 3:52
  [Guest] That's the loop. The fund grows two percent for every fifty percent the valuation rises, and valuation rises on price and margin. The better the company gets at making you pay, the more it can afford to give some of you back.
• 4:06
  [Host] What would make a pledge like this real, then, rather than a post?
• 4:10
  [Guest] Three tests: can it be taken back, what does it buy, and who controls it. Musk's can be taken back with a delete button, Anthropic's top-ups sit at the board's discretion, and neither names what it buys. Nothing announced this week has a rule that outlives the person who made it.
• 4:27
  [Host] So what did I actually get this week?
• 4:30
  [Guest] A promise of a hundred and forty-six dollars per kid from a man who posts, and a fund with tens of billions on paper and no name on the envelope. Both are claims on profit, decided by the people who own the rest of it.
• 4:45
  [Host] So I get a slice of the pie, cut by the people who own the bakery, and the price of bread stays where they set it?
• 4:53
  [Guest] That's the deal on the table. The question nobody answered on Sunday or Monday is whether the public gets a say, or just a check. For more on who owns the machines and whether a share is the same as access, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.