Dario Amodei doesn’t hesitate when I ask what’s gotten into him. The Anthropic CEO has spent 2025 at war, feuding with industry counterparts, members of the government, and the public’s perception of artificial intelligence.
In recent months, he’s predicted that AI could soon eliminate 50% of entry-level, white-collar jobs. He’s railed against a ten-year AI regulation moratorium in the pages of the New York Times. And he’s called for semiconductor export controls to China, drawing a public rebuke from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Amid it all, Amodei meets me on the first floor of his company’s downtown San Francisco headquarters. He’s loose, energetic, and anxious to get started, as if he’s been waiting for this moment to address his actions. Sporting a blue shawl-collar sweater over a casual white t-shirt, and boxy thick-rimmed glasses, he sits down and stares ahead.
Underlying his efforts, Amodei says, is a firm belief that AI is moving faster than most of us appreciate, making its opportunities and consequences much closer than they appear. “I am indeed one of the most bullish about AI capabilities improving very fast,” he tells me. “As we've gotten more close to AI systems that are more powerful, I've wanted to say those things more forcefully, more publicly, to make the point clearer.”
Amodei’s outspokenness and sharp elbows have earned him both respect and derision in Silicon Valley. He’s seen by some as a technological visionary who pioneered OpenAI’s GPT-3 project (the seeds of ChatGPT) and a safety-minded leader who broke off and founded Anthropic. Others see him as a control-oriented “doomer” who wants to slow AI progress, shape it to his liking, and shut out the competition.
Love him or hate him, the AI field will have to deal with him. Amodei has turned Anthropic, currently valued at $61 billion, into an economic force. From a zero start in 2021, the company — though still unprofitable — has grown its annualized recurring revenue from $1.4 billion in March 2025 to $3 billion in May to nearly $4.5 billion in July, leading Amodei to call it the “fastest growing software company in history at the scale that it's at.”
Perhaps more notable than Anthropic’s revenue is the way it’s coming in. Rather than relying primarily on applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Amodei’s biggest bet is on the underlying technology itself. Most of the company’s revenue, Amodei tells me, is earned via its API, or through other companies buying Anthropic’s AI models and using them within their own products. Anthropic will thus be a barometer of AI’s progress, rising and falling on the strength of the technology.
As Anthropic grows, Amodei hopes its heft will help him influence the industry’s direction. And given his willingness to speak out, throw a punch, and take one, he’s probably right.
So if this man will steer what may be the world’s most influential new technology, it’s worth understanding what drives him, his business, and why his timeline is shorter than so many others’. And after more than two dozen interviews with him, his friends, colleagues, and competitors, I believe I have an answer.
A Curable Illness
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