SAN FRANCISCO – Daniela Amodei possesses a distinctive energy, a blend of warmth and unhurried presence that immediately commands attention. She entered a sun-drenched room at Anthropic’s headquarters in December, settling in with a disarming apology for her “gigantic novelty mug,” deferring to the “wise camera people” about its potential impact on the shot. This moment of candid normalcy belied the significance of her position.
Five years prior, she and her brother, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, led a notable exodus from OpenAI. They took with them a core group of senior researchers, embarking on a venture with a contrarian thesis: that the pursuit of AI safety and business success were not mutually exclusive, that substantial value lay beyond viral consumer products, and that the artificial intelligence race would ultimately be won by those who prioritized measured progress. “We really just felt more like we were running towards something than running away from something,” Daniela reflected on their departure. The siblings had a long-standing professional connection with co-founders Tom Brown and Chris Olah, having worked together at Google Brain, with other overlaps across various research labs prior to their time at OpenAI.
Anthropic’s headquarters is strategically located in San Francisco’s “AI Alley,” a prestigious 230,000-square-foot glass high-rise in the vicinity of Salesforce Tower. This area has become a nexus for startups and established tech giants driving significant shifts in the American economy. Anthropic itself is now valued at $183 billion and is reportedly on track to nearly double that valuation, following a recent term sheet that includes investments from Microsoft and Nvidia. The company’s revenue has seen a tenfold annual increase for three consecutive years, largely driven by the widespread adoption of its AI assistant, Claude, among enterprises that prioritize reliability and capability. Daniela Amodei shared a personal anecdote about Claude’s remarkable ability to help diagnose a bacterial infection she had, a condition that had eluded multiple medical professionals.
In demeanor, Daniela Amodei presents a stark contrast to the archetypal AI founder often embodied by figures like OpenAI’s Sam Altman or Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk. While her brother, Dario, often adopts the persona of a technical visionary focused on timelines to superintelligence and delivers interviews akin to TED talks, Daniela embodies the foundational element. If Dario is charting the course towards the horizon, she is meticulously laying the groundwork that makes that journey possible.
### Anthropic vs. OpenAI: A Strategic Divergence
The artificial intelligence race effectively began in November 2022 with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT. The chatbot’s instant virality, achieving 100 million users within two months, spurred rapid responses from Google and a significant investment from Microsoft, galvanizing the entire tech industry. Anthropic, however, adopted a different approach, prioritizing a slower, more deliberate pace and optimizing for trust.
While ChatGPT captured public imagination as a consumer novelty, the Amodeis pursued a distinct strategy. They posited that the most sustainable revenue streams would stem not from fleeting viral moments, but from the less flashy, yet critical, enterprise infrastructure supporting them. This involved securing Fortune 500 contracts, developing robust developer tools, and offering APIs to businesses where reliability, security, and regulatory compliance are paramount.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that we knew for sure,” Daniela Amodei explained to CNBC regarding their enterprise focus. “Anthropic, as an organization, is well suited to be a B2B company. We really care about things like reliability and security and safety. That’s baked into our DNA.”
Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, notes that the current frontier of AI is shifting towards practical applications such as coding, mathematics, and scientific research – tasks for which businesses are willing to invest. “The frontier isn’t about making our chat better,” he commented, highlighting Anthropic’s strength in the developer community. Claude has earned a reputation as a top-tier programming model, often outperforming key rivals within users’ workflows.
Even as early as 2020, Daniela Amodei envisioned a future where Claude would handle numerous high-intelligence tasks typically performed by humans in a professional setting. “And we thought, that’s a pretty big market.” Anthropic reports that its business customer base has expanded from fewer than 1,000 to over 300,000 within two years, with nearly 80% of Claude’s usage now originating outside the United States. The company’s enterprise client list includes prominent organizations such as Novo Nordisk, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, Bridgewater, Stripe, and Slack, all of whom utilize Claude extensively.
Sameer Dholakia, a partner at Bessemer Ventures and an investor in Anthropic, emphasizes that the company’s enterprise-centric strategy was a sound decision because business clients exhibit significantly lower churn rates compared to consumers. “We really love the focus that they had, and candidly, the focus of Anthropic on safety and trust, we knew was going to play really well with the enterprise buyer, and that’s proven to be true.”
While OpenAI maintains an edge in sheer scale and cultural recognition, with ChatGPT being a household name and boasting nearly 900 million weekly active users, Anthropic is rapidly closing the gap and has surpassed its rival in specific areas. Currently, approximately 85% of Anthropic’s revenue is derived from its business clients, whereas OpenAI’s revenue is more than 60% consumer-driven.
“One of the values and the things that we talk about a lot internally is just how not to believe the hype,” Daniela Amodei stated. “For us, it’s never been about seeking attention or sort of being in the headlines. We’re really here to do the work.”
Alex Kantrowitz, founder of the independent publication Big Technology, observes, “As Anthropic goes, so goes generative AI. They have the most pure bet on this technology working. If Anthropic is able to make it work, all of GenAI is going to work. And if not, we’re going to have some serious problems.” Anthropic’s lead in the enterprise sector appears to be a sustainable advantage, forged through the collaborative efforts of the Amodei siblings.
“It’s genuinely a privilege to run Anthropic with my sibling,” Daniela Amodei shared. “We’ve known each other our whole lives — or my whole life, at least. He had four years without me, poor guy.” She added, “Dario and I really help each other. He’s great at pushing me to think about the big picture. I am helpful in thinking about, like, how do we build an organization that is enduring, that’s sustainable, that’s filled with great people who really want to do the type of work that we set out to do five years ago.”
Amodei acknowledges that the work is continuous, especially as AI models advance exponentially in sophistication. She draws a parallel to the previous generation of technology, posing the question of whether social media companies would have acted differently in retrospect, given the societal impact of their platforms. Anthropic, she asserts, is actively addressing this question now by “talk[ing] about the risks and try[ing] to mitigate them” proactively. Daniela Amodei’s conviction in this approach underpins the very foundation of her company.
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