When discussing key figures in the current AI era, many think of the big tech giants investing heavily or the creators of ChatGPT who sparked global AI interest. Yet, there is another important person whose name has recently become known not only in Silicon Valley but worldwide, and that is “Dario Amodei” (Dario Amodei)
He is the co-founder of an AI startup called “Anthropic” A tech company that calls itself focused on AI Safety and Research—that is, developing artificial intelligence that is safe. Reports indicate that it will soon close a new funding round, expected to push its valuation to $900 billion.
This five-year-old startup is closely watched by the market due to the success of its product Claude, widely accepted by many, and because the company is projected to become profitable for the first time in the quarter ending June 2026, surpassing competitors OpenAI and xAI.
One key to Anthropic’s victory over competitors, especially in profitability, is its young CEO Dario Amodei, who continuously pushes for AI development that is safe for humanity. He has repeatedly warned the world candidly that AI-driven changes are happening rapidly and will impact many groups, which has led some to criticize him, asking why he remains pessimistic despite creating AI.
“Acknowledging risks early is the first step to solving problems.”Dario Amodei said in an interview with The New York Times. This perspective has shaped his AI development philosophy, emphasizing that AI must be“safe, transparent, controllable, and aligned with human values.”
This article from Thairath Money in theHow to Make Moneycolumn dives deeper into Dario Amodei’s story—how he left OpenAI to build Anthropic, crafting AI based on his own principles, establishing a strong market position that has allowed the company to outpace many big players. He is also listed among Time 100’s most influential people globally. How did he achieve this?
Dario Amodei was born in 1983 and grew up in the tech hub of San Francisco. However, his family background was hardly related to technology. He is the eldest son of Riccardo Amodei, an Italian immigrant to the U.S. who worked as a leather craftsman, and Elena Engel, an American who worked in renovation and library construction projects.
He has a younger sister, Daniela Amodei, born in 1987, who later co-founded Anthropic with him. As a child, Dario was deeply interested in mathematics and science. Daniela once said he was very focused and could count numbers all day just to see where they ended.
After graduating from Lowell High School, one of the oldest public schools in the U.S., Dario studied physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) before transferring and earning his bachelor's degree in science from Stanford University in 2006 at age 23.
That same year, a life-changing event occurred: his father died from a rare disease. A few months later, a method to slow the disease’s progression was discovered, reducing mortality rates. This made Dario realize that faster technological development could save more lives, leading him to also study biology.
He then pursued a Ph.D. in biophysics at Princeton University, an Ivy League school, applying theoretical physics principles to understand living organisms' mechanisms. He received the prestigious Hertz Fellowship, awarded fully to exceptional science students, and graduated in 2011.
While studying, Dario worked with various companies and institutions, including
A turning point came while working with Baidu when he noticed the Scaling AI theory: increasing data, model size, and computing power steadily improves AI performance. This became crucial for later Large Language Model development.
Before OpenAI’s founding, Dario was invited to dinner with Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and AI experts. Wired reported the discussion focused on whether an AI company could beat Google, which became OpenAI's genesis.
However, Dario initially chose to work at Google Brain, publishing key research on AI risks. After about 10 months, he moved to OpenAI as head of AI Safety in 2016.
He played a major role in developing GPT-2 and GPT-3, marking the start of the modern Large Language Model era, aligning with OpenAI’s goal of advancing AI for humanity.
He also co-invented Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), a method teaching AI to respond in ways humans prefer by using human decisions to score its behavior.
Before RLHF, AI might be highly knowledgeable but lacked social skills, sometimes being rude, disruptive, or harmful. RLHF helped AI learn human values, safety, and etiquette, enabling today’s chatbots to interact naturally, politely, and helpfully.
Despite growing confidence in Scaling, Dario insisted AI requires serious safety systems and oversight. He believed scaling and RLHF alone can’t guarantee AI will align with human values and intentions.
“You can’t build moral values into AI just by adding more compute,”he said. Over time, he felt OpenAI’s leadership did not prioritize safety as much as he expected. In 2020, after becoming VP of research, he resigned.
After disagreements with OpenAI co-founders, he founded his own AI company in 2021—Anthropic—based on the principle that“powerful AI alone is not enough if systems cannot safely collaborate with humans long-term.”
Anthropic was founded by Dario, his sister Daniela, and former OpenAI executives and researchers. Initially seen as a latecomer, in less than two years it became a unicorn.
Anthropic launched its AI model Claude nearly a year after ChatGPT, focusing on enterprise clients and excelling in code generation, while OpenAI targeted general consumers.
Claude’s underlying approach is Constitutional AI, training and controlling AI with firm rules akin to a constitution to guide its decisions and self-evaluation.
The goal is to make AI safe, neutral, and highly beneficial to humans, reducing human filtering and minimizing bias from human judgment.
Anthropic’s strength lies in its enterprise focus, yielding stable revenue and better margins than consumer-focused companies. It also carefully balances huge data center investments with business risk control, unlike some AI firms that aggressively invest without much risk concern.
Last November, Anthropic announced a $30 billion Microsoft Azure processing deal, receiving up to $5 billion in funding from Microsoft and up to $10 billion from Nvidia.
According to the Financial Times, Anthropic’s Q2 2026 revenue is expected to reach about $10.9 billion, more than double the $4.8 billion in Q1.
This rapid revenue growth should generate an operating profit around $559 million. The company is also nearing a $30 billion fundraising deal to boost its valuation to $900 billion.
Anthropic plans an IPO in 2026, potentially valuing the company over $1.2 trillion. Forbes reports Dario Amodei’s net worth at $7 billion, mostly from Anthropic’s growth.
Sources:Dario Amodei,Business Insider,Forbes,Time,Founder File, Financial Times [1][2]
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