Anthropic is committing $50 million through the end of 2027 to Bay Area nonprofits, with a focus on San Francisco, through a new donor-advised fund at the San Francisco Foundation, the foundation announced Tuesday. The first $500,000 is being granted immediately to four long-running local organizations.
Those first grants go to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, which works with 265 community groups in the two counties; GLIDE, the Tenderloin church and social-service organization that serves three free meals a day, 364 days a year; the Interfaith Winter Shelter, which the San Francisco Interfaith Council says has brought together more than 50 faith communities to offer a bed, a meal and a shower; and the San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 Toy Program, run by active and retired firefighters since 1949 for children recovering from fires and disasters or living in shelters, hospitals or protective custody.
“San Francisco has always been a place of enormous possibility, but that possibility isn’t shared equally by everyone,” Daniela Amodei, Anthropic’s co-founder and president, said in the foundation’s announcement. “We have been privileged to build Anthropic here, and we want to make sure our success expands opportunity, not widens the gaps that already exist.” Foundation CEO Fred Blackwell said the gift is a “real commitment to the place it calls home,” and that he hopes other companies follow. Rehana Abbas, the foundation’s chief philanthropy officer, told KTVU that “$50 million of corporate giving in one year is quite remarkable,” and pointed to cuts in food benefits and the coming rainy season. The foundation’s written announcement describes the $50 million as a commitment through 2027, not a single calendar year; KTVU’s phrasing is Abbas’s characterization of the scale of the gift.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Food Bank reaches more than 46,000 households a week, and that Mayor Daniel Lurie has been urging local tech companies to take part in civic philanthropy. The Chronicle said Lurie pitched OpenAI on a civic partnership and that the company declined. Tanis Crosby, the Food Bank’s executive director, said the grant “puts more fresh, healthy groceries within reach across San Francisco and Marin.” GLIDE President and CEO Gina Fromer said it helps the organization “keep the table set and the doors open.”
The Amodei siblings grew up in San Francisco and attended Lowell High School. The foundation said they later started Anthropic in their hometown, with early employees gathering in Precita Park, and that the company now has more than 2,500 employees at its San Francisco headquarters. Anthropic is also preparing a public offering; the $50 million fund is a separate, concrete commitment to local groups that already feed, house and clothe people in the city the company calls home, rather than a pledge tied to the stock sale.