On Thursday, July 9, 2026, Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, announced the appointment of Ben Bernanke to its Long-Term Benefit Trust (LTBT). The trust is the company’s independent governance body: it advises leadership and appoints members of the board of directors.

Bernanke chaired the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, steering the central bank through the worst of the 2008 financial crisis. According to a post published on Anthropic’s blog, Bernanke will help the company understand how AI is transforming the economy and how to act on that understanding in both the near and long term.

Bernanke’s role at Anthropic

Bernanke joins Neill Buddy Shah, Richard Fontaine and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar on Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust. Per the company’s press release, the trustees’ combined expertise — spanning global health, national security, law, public policy and economics — is meant to help ensure the responsible development of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.

«The potential of AI is enormous, as is the range of possible outcomes,» Bernanke said. «How that potential unfolds depends, in part, on the institutions we build around it. I am honored to have this opportunity.»

Bernanke’s first remarks as a full member of Anthropic hint at the LTBT’s long-term priorities. In his view, AI could have economic effects on a scale never before seen from a single technology. Anthropic, he suggested, first needs to understand the implications before it can act on them.

The LTBT can appoint members of Anthropic’s board of directors, while its trustees are responsible for advising the board and management on critical decisions — particularly those touching on AI’s potential risks and its impact on society.

Who is Ben Bernanke

Ben Bernanke is an American economist best known for chairing the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014 and for winning the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was the official who managed the collapse of the mortgage market and the failure of Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis.

Among other measures, Bernanke’s Fed introduced ultra-expansive monetary policy through quantitative easing to inject liquidity into the financial system. In 2009, Time magazine named him Person of the Year, and President Barack Obama confirmed him for a second term as Fed chair that same year.

After leaving the Fed in 2014, Bernanke joined the Brookings Institution, where he has focused on economic and monetary policy. In the private sector, he has spent years as a senior advisor to Citadel, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, and to PIMCO, a giant in bond fund management.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Pasquale Conte on July 10, 2026 as «Anthropic, l’ex numero uno della Fed Ben Bernanke entra nel trust indipendente dell’azienda AI». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.