---
title: "The Long-Term Benefit Trust"
description: "Anthropic announces the Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT), a new governance structure intended to address the unusually large public externalities it associates with transformative AI. The independent Trust has five financially disinterested Trustees and, alongside Anthropic’s Delaware Public Benefit Corporation status, is meant to add accountability to the public interest without directing ordinary commercial decisions. Created through Class T stock after Series C, it can elect and remove board members, with authority phasing in through time- and funding-based milestones and reaching a board majority within four years; investors also receive a new directly elected seat. Protective provisions require notice of certain major actions, while amendment rules combine agreement-based changes with supermajority failsafes whose thresholds rise as the Trust gains power. Anthropic presents the arrangement as an experiment, with initial one-year Trustees selected after a year-long search and future Trustees elected by the Trustees."
---

# The Long-Term Benefit Trust

[Anthropic](https://yomu.fyi/company/anthropic) · Jul 9, 2026

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Anthropic announces the Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT), a new governance structure intended to address the unusually large public externalities it associates with transformative AI. The independent Trust has five financially disinterested Trustees and, alongside Anthropic’s Delaware Public Benefit Corporation status, is meant to add accountability to the public interest without directing ordinary commercial decisions. Created through Class T stock after Series C, it can elect and remove board members, with authority phasing in through time- and funding-based milestones and reaching a board majority within four years; investors also receive a new directly elected seat. Protective provisions require notice of certain major actions, while amendment rules combine agreement-based changes with supermajority failsafes whose thresholds rise as the Trust gains power. Anthropic presents the arrangement as an experiment, with initial one-year Trustees selected after a year-long search and future Trustees elected by the Trustees.

## Context

Anthropic says conventional corporate governance mechanisms primarily make directors accountable to stockholders, while transformative AI could create unusually large externalities, including national security risks, economic disruption, threats to humanity, and broad benefits. It also says AI-specific laws and social norms have not yet caught up with the technology’s rapid development, and that Public Benefit Corporation status alone does not directly align directors with the general public.

## Approach / What changed

Anthropic created the LTBT as an independent body of five Trustees and issued Class T stock exclusively to the Trust. The stock grants authority to elect and remove a growing number of board members, reaching a majority within four years, and includes protective provisions requiring notice of certain significant actions. The structure also uses amendment procedures and supermajority failsafes intended to balance durability with the ability to revise an experimental design.

## Takeaways

- Class T stock gives the LTBT authority to elect and remove board members through time- and funding-based milestones; the Trust will elect a board majority within four years.
- The LTBT is designed to focus on long-range issues such as catastrophic-risk evaluation and nation-state-level security, rather than Anthropic’s ordinary commercial strategy.
- Changes to the Trust can generally be made through agreement, while failsafe provisions permit sufficiently large stockholder supermajorities to amend its powers; required thresholds increase as those powers phase in.

**Tags:** [AI](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai), [AI Governance](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai-governance)

- Source: [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust)
- Source URL: https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-09T11:37:39.973Z

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