Anthropic appoints former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to its Long-Term Benefit Trust

11:00 AM · July 14, 2026

Anthropic has appointed Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chair who led the US central bank through the 2008 financial crisis, to its Long-Term Benefit Trust — the independent trust structure that oversees whether Anthropic is living up to its mission of developing AI safely and responsibly. According to Anthropic, Bernanke was selected for his extensive expertise in economics and crisis management, seen as directly relevant to grappling with AI's disruptive economic effects. An Anthropic co-founder said Bernanke's 'career has run from studying how economies react to disruptive moments to helping steer the world's largest economy through one such time,' and that his experience navigating the 2008 crisis demonstrated the judgment and independence the company wants from its trustees. The Long-Term Benefit Trust is Anthropic's mechanism for maintaining outside accountability over the company's safety commitments even as it scales commercially, and Bernanke's appointment adds a globally recognized figure in economic crisis management to a body increasingly focused on how AI reshapes labor markets and the broader economy.