Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei once reflected on a moment of clarity that helped her walk away from OpenAI and eventually build a new artificial intelligence company without looking back.
A Difficult Decision To Leave OpenAI
In a May conversation at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Amodei said the decision to leave OpenAI in late 2020, alongside her brother Dario Amodei and other senior researchers, did not initially feel obvious or easy.
At the time, she described the move as uncertain and even “kind of a crazy thing to do,” noting that the team debated whether they could still make things work inside the organization.
The Advice That Changed Her Perspective
The turning point, she explained, came during a conversation with a trusted friend and mentor outside the company.
Instead of offering direct guidance, the mentor told her, “Honestly, I don’t think you really need to be on the phone with me. You already know what the right answer is.”
That simple statement, Amodei said, reframed the decision entirely.
“When you’re in a moment of, ‘Is this the right thing for my life?’ often you actually know what the right answer is,” she said, adding that the advice helped her trust her own judgment.
From OpenAI Executive To Stripe Early Hire
According to Forbes, Amodei’s net worth is currently at $7 billion. She spent roughly three years at OpenAI, where she served as an engineering manager and later as vice president.
Before that, she studied English literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, before joining fintech unicorn Stripe in 2013 as a founding recruiter.
From Uncertainty To Anthropic’s Founding
Anthropic was founded in 2021. Competing closely with OpenAI, Anthropic last week overtook it as the world’s most valuable startup after raising $65 billion in a Series H round, valuing the company at $965 billion.
The company is rapidly expanding its compute footprint, securing 5 gigawatts of capacity from Amazon and another 5 gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity through deals with Google and Broadcom.
Anthropic has also partnered with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to access GPU capacity at its Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 facilities.
On the product side, the company has launched Claude Opus 4.8, its latest model aimed at improving performance while adding new controls for developers and enterprise users.
It is also advancing Project Glasswing, an AI security testing initiative involving more than 50 organizations.
Anthropic has also submitted a draft Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, paving the way for a potential public listing once the regulator completes its review.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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