About Dario Amodei
Dario Amodei is the CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude. Before founding Anthropic in 2021, he served as VP of Research at OpenAI, where he led the development of GPT-2 and GPT-3.
Career Highlights
- Anthropic (2021-present): Co-founder and CEO
- OpenAI (2016-2021): VP of Research, led GPT-2 and GPT-3 development
- Baidu (2014-2016): Senior Research Scientist
- Princeton/Stanford: PhD in Computational Neuroscience
Notable Positions
On AI Economics (2025)
At the Dealbook Summit, Amodei gave his most candid assessment of AI economics:
"If I'm really dumb and I extrapolate the pattern, 10 to 100 billion. I don't believe that."
He describes a "cone of uncertainty" where Anthropic's 2026 revenue could land anywhere from $20B to $50B, while data centers take 2 years to build.
On Enterprise vs Consumer
Amodei has positioned Anthropic firmly in the enterprise market:
"Surprising how different the personality and capabilities of the models are if you're building for businesses versus consumers."
On Internal AI Usage
"I've had internal people at Anthropic say 'I don't write any code anymore. I don't open up an editor. I just let Claude Code write the first draft and all I do is edit it.'"
Key Quotes
- "There's a cone of uncertainty - revenue could be $20B or $50B."
- "Some players are yoloing things."
- "Enterprise is where the margins are."
Related Reading
- Enterprise AI - Anthropic's strategic focus
- Model Commoditization - The market dynamic Amodei navigates
Video Appearances
Uncertainty in predictions
There's maybe 20-25% chance that in the next 2 years the models just stop getting better. If so, everyone makes fun of me for all the warnings. I'm totally fine with that.
at 00:03:33
Scaling continues
From what we've seen at Anthropic, we don't see any diminishing returns. SweetBench went from 3% to 72-80% in 18 months.
at 00:09:49
Business growth
Anthropic is the fastest growing software company in history at this scale. Zero to $100M in 2023, to $1B in 2024, to $4.5B in H1 2025.
at 00:20:10
Personal motivation
I get very angry when people call me a doomer. My father died because of cures that could have happened a few years later. I understand the benefit of this technology.
at 00:40:10
Response to critics
On Jensen Huang's claim that I want to control the industry: 'That's an outrageous lie. That's the most outrageous lie I've ever heard.'
at 00:54:15
Anthropic revenue growth
Amodei describes how Anthropic's revenue went 10x yearly for three years - from $0 to $100M to $1B to projected $8-10B for 2025.
at 00:05:00
AI industry risk-taking
On competitors taking unwise risks: 'There are people who constitutionally want to yolo things or just like big numbers.'
at 00:12:00
AI coding adoption
Internal staff at Anthropic don't write code anymore - they let Claude Code write the first draft and just edit it.
at 00:18:00
Enterprise AI safety
At Dreamforce 2025, discussing safety with Benioff: 'Safety and responsibility are going to be very important to make sure that the models behave predictably as we deploy them.'
at 00:03:45
AI coding automation
At Davos 2026: 'I have engineers within Anthropic who say I don't write any code anymore. I just let the model write the code. We might be 6 to 12 months away from when the model is doing most, maybe all, of what engineers do end to end.'
at 00:04:20
Geopolitics and AI safety
On chip exports: 'I think of this more as like, are we going to sell nuclear weapons to North Korea because that produces some profit for Boeing.'
at 00:18:30
AGI timeline
On AGI timeline: 'If I had to guess, I would guess that this goes faster than people imagine... It's very hard for me to see how it could take longer than a few years.'
at 00:15:00
Pushback on automation claims
Referenced by Grady Booch, who responds to Amodei's claim that software engineering will be automatable in 12 months: 'It's utter BS. I think he's profoundly wrong. He has a fundamental misunderstanding as to what software engineering is.'
at 00:25:00
Founding story and safety vision
In a fireside with co-founders, Dario discusses why Anthropic had to exist, the RSP as 'the holy document,' and predicts Chris Olah could win a Nobel Prize for interpretability work.
at 00:00:00