OpenAI and Anthropic Put Prophets Before Profits

WSJ Opinion Page ^ | 07/16/2026 | Jesse M. Fried

[Wuli]

Unaccountable ‘mission’ directors could bring a Ben & Jerry’s-style meltdown without helping humanity.

As OpenAI and Anthropic head toward initial public offerings, investors may be surprised to learn who controls each of these companies. It isn’t their CEOs or investors. Rather, both companies are controlled by “mission” directors, who may own little or no equity, who aren’t accountable to investors and whose missions allow—or require—them to sacrifice stockholder profits for the benefit of humanity. They pose a risk to investors, especially at OpenAI, and it isn’t clear they’ll help benefit humanity.

The only other company to use such directors is Ben & Jerry’s, an experiment that ended in spectacular failure. In 2000 the ice-cream maker’s founders sold their company to Unilever after it agreed to an arrangement preventing the company from running its subsidiary solely for profit. Unilever would share control with independent directors who were self-perpetuating: They couldn’t be removed by Unilever, and they appointed their own successors. They were empowered to preserve Ben & Jerry’s “social mission” and “brand integrity,” no matter how much it cost Unilever.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: ai

[Wuli]

Self perpetuating "mission boards" - they choose there own successors, are currently in control of the U.S. two largest AI systems, and that won't change when they "go public".

[butlerweave]

OpenAI burns through cash and Anthropic might make a profit , na they’ll always lose other peoples money

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Sounds like ESG on steroids (Environmental, Social, and Governance). Those are the standards used to measure an organization’s societal and environmental impact. It’s been a colossal failure leading to poor financial performance.

[Frank Drebin]

What profit? It’s all circular financing with additional subsidization by taxpayers who are mostly unaware of what is really going on with their money.

[muir_redwoods]

Remember MySpace?
Sony Betamax?
AOL?

Somehow I don’t think these two will be the market leaders forever if they’re guided by blind visionaries.

[Wuli]

One of the points the author was trying to make was to tell retail investors that the corporate-board structure of the two AI giants should worn folks away from buying stock in either company.

[Jim W N]

Maybe that’s good, putting TRUE prophets ahead of proftis...

[jroehl]

80% of Anthropics “workers” are Indian citizens brought into the USA to replace white American men.

[Wuli]

Most of the biggest investors backing Myspace were Ameerican, while with FB beside Microsoft some it’s biggest investors were Russian oligarchs.

[Wuli]

Self perpetuating boards are never a good thing.

And if you want or need outside investors (shareholders) companies run by such boards make for very risky investments as profits and shareholder value is last priority to them.

[montag813]

"Rollerball" had an interesting premise, wherein corporations took effective control of the world, backed by "liquid computing" AGI called "Zero" - the "world's brain" but the important information in Zero was restricted only to the elite. The masses were distracted by entertainment and sports that was controlled and fixed by the corporations.