The Other Path: Comparing Anthropic’s Mission to OpenAI’s Evolution

While OpenAI was quietly editing its mission statement, Anthropic took a different approach. Let’s look at what we can learn from both.

The Core Insight

Following Simon Willison’s analysis of OpenAI’s mission evolution through IRS filings, someone asked: what about Anthropic? Unlike OpenAI’s 501(c)(3) structure, Anthropic is a “public benefit corporation”—a different legal entity that doesn’t require annual mission filings with the IRS.

But Willison found their founding documents filed with the State of Delaware, which reveal a remarkably consistent mission from 2021 to 2024.

Why This Matters

Anthropic’s founding documents tell a different story than OpenAI’s:

2021 (original): “responsibly develop and maintain advanced AI for the cultural, social and technological improvement of humanity.”

2024 (current): “responsibly develop and maintain advanced AI for the long term benefit of humanity.”

The changes are minimal—”cultural, social and technological improvement” became just “long term benefit.” That’s it. No gradual erosion of safety commitments, no deletion of openness references, no silent removal of financial constraints.

Compare this to OpenAI’s trajectory from 2016 to 2024, where nearly every version removed more language than it added.

Key Takeaways

• Legal structure matters – Public benefit corporations don’t have the same mission-statement requirements as nonprofits, so we have less public documentation
• Delaware incorporation documents are public – This is an underexplored source for tracking AI company evolution
• Consistency can mean stagnation – Either Anthropic’s mission is more stable, or they just haven’t faced the same commercial pressures
• “Long term benefit” is doing a lot of work – It’s vague enough to be almost meaningless, but at least it’s still there

Looking Ahead

The contrast is striking: OpenAI’s mission has been edited so many times it’s barely recognizable, while Anthropic’s has remained essentially static. Whether this reflects genuine commitment, different commercial pressures, or simply different legal constraints is hard to say from the outside.

What we can say: when it comes to stated missions, Anthropic looks more stable. Whether that translates to actual behavior is a much harder question.

Based on analysis of “Anthropic’s public benefit mission” by Simon Willison