Anthropic is founded

Background

Anthropic is an AI company that was formed by people who had previously worked at OpenAI.^[1]

What happened

Anthropic, PBC was incorporated in January 2021 by former employees of OpenAI.^[1] Wikipedia lists eight founders: Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark, Chris Olah, Ben Mann, Sam McCandlish and Tom Brown.^[1] Dario Amodei became chief executive officer and Daniela Amodei became president.^[1]

Key details

The company was set up as a public benefit corporation. Its stated mission was "the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity".^[2]

Anthropic raised $124 million in May 2021.^[1] In April 2022 it announced $580 million in funding, including $500 million from FTX.^[1]

A public benefit corporation is a company form in which the directors may weigh a stated public purpose alongside shareholders' financial interests. The purpose is written into the company's charter, which makes it a formal part of how the company is governed.

Impact

These early steps began the history that the rest of this archive follows: the funding rounds, the safety policies and the Claude models that came later.