If founders and other business leaders weren’t already envious of Dario Amodei, who sits atop one of the world’s fastest-growing AI companies — currently valued by private market investors at roughly the trillion-dollar mark little more than five years after it was founded — they’re going to be seriously envious now.
In a new sit-down with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, he reveals he has just one direct report; that’s his chief of staff. Everyone else on Anthropic’s executive team reports to his sister, co-founder and President Daniela Amodei, who handles day-to-day operations.
Anyone who has managed a large team knows that the people side of the job has a way of consuming everything else. Amodei’s arrangement frees him to focus almost entirely on strategy, culture, research direction, and sweeping essays on the future of civilization (with footnotes). “It’s incredibly freeing,” he tells Chang.
It’s a highly unusual structure. OpenAI’s Sam Altman reportedly has around half a dozen direct reports, which is far more standard, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang — another extreme outlier — has many dozens.
Amodei also noted that Anthropic is unusual in another way: all seven of its co-founders are still with the company, including the Amodei siblings. “We’re basically the only company in the space” that can make that claim, he said.