Reed Hastings, the former CEO of Netflix that now serves as the streamer’s chairman, has been appointed to the board of directors of Anthropic, the AI company announced on Wednesday.
Hastings has experience serving on the boards of Facebook, Microsoft, and Bloomberg and served as CEO of Netflix since its founding, stepping down in 2023.
Anthropic, which is behind the Large Language Model (LLM) Claude designed to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, hasn’t been as focused on image and video generation models that would speak to the entertainment space, but the company last year received $4 billion in funding from Amazon to continue growing. It also is known for its Constitutional AI initiative that is designed to align AI with human values.
Hastings recently donated $50 million to Bowdoin College to establish a research initiative on AI and Humanity. The program examines how AI will transform work, relationships, and education while developing ethical frameworks for its use, which is exactly up Anthropic’s alley.
Hastings was appointed to the board by Anthropic’s Long Term Benefit Trust.
“The Long Term Benefit Trust appointed Reed because his impressive leadership experience, deep philanthropic work, and commitment to addressing AI’s societal challenges makes him uniquely qualified to guide Anthropic at this critical juncture in AI development” said Buddy Shah, Chair of Anthropic’s Long Term Benefit Trust.
“Anthropic is very optimistic about the AI benefits for humanity, but is also very aware of the economic, social, and safety challenges. I’m joining Anthropic’s board because I believe in their approach to AI development, and to help humanity progress,” Hastings said in a statement.
“Reed understands that technology companies have a responsibility beyond just building products,” said Daniela Amodei, President of Anthropic. “His focus on the human impact of technology — whether at Netflix or through his global health and education initiatives — makes him an ideal addition to our board as we continue building AI that helps rather than harms.”
Current Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos recently addressed where he believes the “bigger opportunity” lies with AI in filmmaking.
“There’s a ton of excitement about what AI can do for content creators,” Sarandos said on a recent earnings call. “I read the article too about what Jim Cameron said about making movies 50 percent cheaper. I remain convinced that there’s an even bigger opportunity if you can make movies 10 percent better. So, our talent today is using AI tools to do set references, pre-vis, VFX sequence prep, shot planning, all kinds of things today that kind of make the process better.”
