Manifesto

Sentience utilizes A.I. and agentic workflows to drive efficiency, profits and growth for our clients.

As the founding team of Sentience, we recognise the power of A.I. and the risk of it being used as a tool to further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. Our current context is ripe with examples of people in positions of power abusing it for their own gain, at the expense of wider society. And we cannot get behind the idea of building a market leading, agentic business services company, without also accounting for the fact that when we succeed in doing so, we will ourselves have concentrated economic power in the hands of those who own the company.

We feel the only real solution is to intentionally define a system of governance, that ensures that the business ownership always remains diversified, and that the business itself is always steered towards ensuring the broader benefit of human society, in addition to the benefit of our clients and stakeholders.

Unfortunately the current paradigm of shareholder capitalism falls woefully short in allowing us to ensure this, regardless of how we choose to structure our business internally.

We have therefore taken a decision to be a Steward Owned Business.

Steward Ownership allows us to separate economic ownership and control - and establish an independent system of oversight for our business, to ensure that:

• Economic efficiency (= profits) will always be generated while being in service of the planet and the people on it. We commit to ensuring this remains true for ourselves, and by extension, this will be a criteria for us while deciding which clients we choose to work with.
• Organizational control (= stewardship), will rest with stewards that enjoy the broad support of the employees, clients, investors & other stakeholders of the organization.
• Economic upside is decoupled from control, and will be allocated as a means to fairly compensate all who invest in the business or hold responsibilities within it, in service of this mission and these principles.

Capitalism has long been overdue an upgrade. Sentience is the manifestation of our desire to evolve it.

- The Sentience team

• 
  Hatim Baheranwala
• 
  Jacob Pruess