Anthropic's plans for a public listing that could value the AI company at up to $2 trillion are drawing scrutiny to its unusual governance model, in which an external Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT) holds no equity but controls the majority of the board. The trust was set up to protect Anthropic's mission of developing AI for humanity's long-term benefit as commercial pressures grow, and the company intends to keep the arrangement in place after going public, making it a test case for how AI firms balance profit motives against stated ethical commitments once subject to public-market accountability.

The LTBT can appoint or dismiss most Anthropic directors and has already chosen four of the company's seven board members, including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan. It currently has three of a possible five trustees, chaired by Neil Buddy Shah of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, alongside former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security. Trustees receive advance notice of major decisions such as new model launches, meet weekly among themselves and regularly with Anthropic's leadership, and have weighed in on issues including the rollout of its Mythos cybersecurity model and a dispute with the US government over autonomous weapons; however, critics such as Harvard's Jesse Fried warn the structure creates a "built-in conflict" between investors and self-appointed trustees, and the trust has yet to be tested by a genuine clash between profit and mission.