Anthropic pays each trustee of its fund $400,000 per year

Anthropic pays each trustee of its Long-Term Benefit Trust $400,000 annually in cash, according to the S-1 filing. Chairman Neil "Buddy" Shah receives an additional $25,000 for leading the fund.

The payment is set annually by the trustees themselves and does not depend on Anthropic's financial results, as stated in the document. For the nine months ended September 30, 2026, the company paid the fund $8.43 million. Previously, payments amounted to $2.72 million in 2023, zero in 2024, and $906,089 in 2025. The payments cover the fund's operating expenses and trustee compensation.

What is this fund

The Long-Term Benefit Trust is a structure designed as a long-term governance mechanism: it holds class T shares, which allow it to elect directors constituting the majority of Anthropic's board after the IPO. Thus, the trust gains control over the board's composition, and its decisions are formally not tied to the company's current financial performance.

The filing names four trustees: Shah, executive director of the Clinton Health Access Initiative; Richard Fontaine, who joined in April 2025; former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who joined in June 2026; and physicist Christopher Stubbs, who joined in October 2026.

The amount of $8.43 million for the nine months of 2026 significantly exceeds the total payments for 2023–2025—about $3.6 million. This reflects both the fund's operating expenses and the fixed compensation of its members.