Chamath: AGI Is Here, Anthropic’s $100B Giveaway, Elon’s SpaceX Shares for 72M Kids | EP #304

All right.

Let's open with a story that's either the most generous move in corporate history or the cleverest IPO marketing ploy ever.

So on Sunday, Anthropic announced the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund.

Let me read from their post.

Quote, Subject to stockholder approval, 5% of Anthropic shares will be committed today with an additional 2% added at the board's discretion for every 50% increase in the company's value above a set baseline.

The Post continues, it is common practice for tech companies to offer escalating compensation awards to their executives.

We are instead directing that equity towards public benefit.

So what is it worth? Anthropic is heading for a roughly $2 trillion IPO, though now $1.5 trillion is being floated.

And at that range, 5% is somewhere between $75 to $100 billion.

Now add the founders' pledge.

When Anthropic started, all seven co-founders pledged to give away 80% of their equity.

About half of the employees are also pledging shares with the matching.

Grant, Anthropic says altogether roughly 20% of the company is dedicated to the public good.

placing it somewhere between $300 to $400 billion compared to OpenAI Foundation's value of $130 to $365 billion.

So it's a lot of money going towards public benefit.

The reactions on X were instant and varied.

Elon said, quote, I recommend giving the shares directly to the public.

This is what I'm going to do.

And more on this in our second story.

AI analyst Andrew Curran said, it sounds to me like they're planning their own form of self-directed UBI.

Brad Gerstner said, it's an extraordinary gift, but warned about, quote, foundation wealth concentration and said, I hope a meaningful portion of AI wealth is direct dividends.

And then Pomerolucky came out and said, this reeks of USAID 2.0.

So, Chamath, let me go to you first.

You're an investor, so is 5% donation right before an IPO generous, or is it a brilliant way to get goodwill?

I mean, I think it's...