Christopher Stubbs joins Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust

Anthropic appointed Harvard experimental physicist Christopher Stubbs to its Long-Term Benefit Trust, making him the first physicist to serve on the independent governance body. The Trust has authority to appoint a majority of Anthropic’s board. Stubbs joins as a trustee, not as a company director or member of management.

That authority runs through Class T shares held exclusively by the Trust, according to Anthropic’s description of the governance structure. Anthropic says the trustees also advise its board and leadership on critical decisions, particularly those involving AI risks and societal impacts.

The appointment does not itself change Anthropic’s board. In April, the Trust appointed Vas Narasimhan to the company’s board, after which Anthropic said Trust-appointed directors constituted a board majority.

Anthropic described the Trust in 2023 as an experiment intended to balance the company’s public-benefit purpose with stockholder interests. The company said the Trust was not expected to intervene in day-to-day operations or ordinary commercial strategy. Instead, it could address longer-term questions, including how leadership evaluates future models for catastrophic risks and protects them against nation-state-level security threats.

Stubbs is Harvard’s Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy. Harvard named him dean of science in 2018. Anthropic said he has advised the U.S. government on national security and arms control through JASON, an independent group of scientists.

Stubbs joins Trust chair Neil Buddy Shah, Richard Fontaine and Ben Bernanke. Anthropic did not disclose his term length, compensation, selection vote or a more precise start date than the October 21 announcement.