Last updated: October 24, 2026
Dario Amodei is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, which is preparing one of the largest IPOs ever. Its public filing is expected as soon as Monday, October 26. A Princeton-trained biophysicist and former OpenAI research chief, he started Anthropic with his sister Daniela in 2021 as a “safety-first” alternative to OpenAI. Five years later it was valued at $965 billion in its latest private round, and it’s reportedly seeking a valuation of up to $2 trillion on the public markets.
Get profiles like this in your inbox — Subscribe to The Profile (free)
Quick facts
Full name: Dario Amodei
Born: 1983 in San Francisco, California
Education: B.S. in physics, Stanford; Ph.D. in biophysics, Princeton (Hertz Fellow)
Role: Co-founder and CEO, Anthropic
Known for: Leaving OpenAI to found Anthropic; building Claude and Claude Code; warning loudly about AI’s risks while racing to build it
Company value: $965 billion post-money after a $65 billion Series H (May 2026)
Family (public): Sister Daniela Amodei is Anthropic’s president; married to Camilla Clark (2022)
Net worth: Forbes estimates about $15.5 billion (not audited)
Who is Dario Amodei?
Dario Amodei grew up in San Francisco. His father, Riccardo, was an Italian-born leather craftsman, and his mother, Elena Engel, managed library projects. He went to Lowell High School, made the U.S. Physics Olympiad team in 2000, and started college at Caltech before finishing a physics degree at Stanford. His father died of a rare illness when Dario was in his early 20s. A few years later, a new treatment turned that illness from mostly fatal into mostly curable. Amodei has said the loss pushed him from physics toward biology, and later toward AI as a way to speed up science.
He earned his Ph.D. in biophysics at Princeton in 2011, studying the electrical activity of neural circuits, then did a postdoc at Stanford’s medical school. In 2014 he moved into AI, first at Baidu’s Silicon Valley lab and then at Google Brain. He joined OpenAI in 2016 and rose to vice president of research. There he helped lead work on GPT-2 and GPT-3 and on reinforcement learning from human feedback, the technique that made chatbots usable.
At the end of 2020, he left OpenAI over disagreements about safety and direction. In 2021, he co-founded Anthropic with Daniela and five other former OpenAI colleagues, including Jared Kaplan and Chris Olah. Anthropic’s pitch was that the people most worried about powerful AI should be the ones building it. The company released its Claude models starting in 2023, and in the past two years Claude Code turned it into the leading supplier of AI to businesses and software developers.
Amodei is unusual among tech CEOs because he talks openly about the worst-case scenarios. He has put the odds of a catastrophic outcome from AI at 10 to 25 percent. He has also warned that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And in September 2026 he called on the industry, his own company included, to deliberately slow down how fast it improves its models.
Career timeline
2000 — Member of the U.S. Physics Olympiad team as a San Francisco high-school student
2011 — Ph.D. in biophysics, Princeton
2014–2015 — Research scientist at Baidu’s AI lab
2015–2016 — Google Brain
2016–2020 — OpenAI, rising to VP of research; helps lead GPT-2, GPT-3 and RLHF
2021 — Co-founds Anthropic with Daniela Amodei and five other ex-OpenAI researchers
November 2023 — Approached by OpenAI’s board about replacing Sam Altman and merging the two companies; declines
October 2024 — Publishes “Machines of Loving Grace,” his optimistic essay on what AI could do
January 2026 — Publishes “The Adolescence of Technology,” his essay on AI’s risks
February–March 2026 — Refuses Pentagon demands to drop Claude’s limits on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons; wins a preliminary injunction
May 2026 — Anthropic raises $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation
September 2026 — Publishes “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling for a deliberate AI slowdown
Fall 2026 — Prepares Anthropic’s IPO; a public S-1 is expected as soon as Oct. 26
Notable deals & projects
Claude and Claude Code: Anthropic’s models, its coding agent Claude Code and the workplace agent Cowork are the core of its business. Run-rate revenue topped $47 billion in May 2026, according to the company.
The Series H: In May 2026, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation in a round led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia. The round included $15 billion of commitments from cloud giants, $5 billion of it from Amazon.
Compute deals: Anthropic has lined up gigawatts of computing power from Amazon and from Google and Broadcom, and has also contracted capacity from SpaceX’s Colossus data centers. According to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on its draft filing, its potential future compute spending runs to roughly $750 billion.
The IPO: According to IFR and Reuters, Anthropic is targeting a mid-November listing, with a roadshow the week of November 9. It could raise up to $100 billion at a valuation of up to $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO on record.
The charity pledge: Anthropic’s co-founders have pledged to give away 80 percent of their shares.
Want the full story? Read our earlier Profile coverage of him — The CEO of a $61-billion AI startup — then subscribe free.
What he’s known for
Founding the AI lab that markets itself on safety, then turning it into one of the fastest-growing companies ever
Long, widely read essays, including “Machines of Loving Grace” and “The Adolescence of Technology”
Saying no to the Pentagon, and winning in court, over how Claude can be used
Being, along with his sister Daniela, one of the few sibling pairs running a major tech company; both made the TIME100 list in 2026
In the news
Oct. 24–26, 2026: Anthropic is expected to make its IPO filing public as soon as Monday, October 26, ahead of a roadshow starting the week of November 9 (IFR). As of Saturday, there was no public S-1 on the SEC’s EDGAR database. Reports on the confidential draft give a first look at the numbers. The Wall Street Journal reported $16.3 billion in revenue and an $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of 2026. IFR reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, up 45% from the second quarter. Not everyone wants the IPO to go ahead quickly. On October 14, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine wrote to Amodei urging Anthropic to pause it until it addresses safety and governance questions. Bloomberg Law reported that Anthropic has since opened talks with his office.
Quotes
“I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be.” — Dario Amodei, “Machines of Loving Grace” (October 2024)
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” — Amodei, “We Must Pace the Frontier” (September 2026)
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.” — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, responding (September 2026)
Controversies / criticism
The Pentagon fight: In February 2026, Anthropic refused Defense Department demands to remove Claude’s bans on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. In response, the department labeled Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” and federal agencies were told to stop using Claude. A federal judge called the move “classic First Amendment retaliation” and blocked it, and later struck down the broad measures. But an appeals court upheld the Pentagon’s narrower power to keep Claude out of defense work.
“Safety” vs. speed: Critics, including Profile coverage, point out that the company most worried about AI is also among those racing fastest to build it, and say its safety commitments have softened under competitive pressure.
The losses: The draft-filing figures reported by the Wall Street Journal show enormous losses and compute commitments. That is a central question for IPO investors.
Net worth & money
There is no reliably audited public net-worth figure. Forbes estimates Amodei’s net worth at about $15.5 billion, based on a stake of roughly 1.6% in Anthropic; Bloomberg’s estimate has been lower. He was paid about $18 million in 2025, mostly in stock, and his base salary was doubled to $1.4 million in July 2026. Those figures could change sharply once Anthropic’s shares start trading. Treat celebrity net-worth sites as unverified.
FAQ
Who is Dario Amodei?
Dario Amodei is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI models. He was previously vice president of research at OpenAI.
How old is Dario Amodei?
He was born in 1983, so he is in his early 40s.
Is Dario Amodei related to Daniela Amodei?
Yes. Daniela Amodei is his younger sister, about four years younger. She co-founded Anthropic with him and serves as its president.
Why did Dario Amodei leave OpenAI?
He left at the end of 2020 over disagreements about the company’s direction and its approach to safety. He then co-founded Anthropic with six other former OpenAI employees.
When is the Anthropic IPO?
Anthropic is reportedly targeting a mid-November 2026 listing, with its public S-1 filing expected as soon as October 26. The company has not announced a date.
What is Dario Amodei’s net worth?
Forbes estimates it at about $15.5 billion. That number depends on Anthropic’s valuation and could change sharply after an IPO.
Further reading
The CEO of a $61-billion AI startup — The Profile
The most disruptive company in the world — The Profile
The AI titans locked in an arms race — The Profile
The woman teaching AI morals: Anthropic’s Amanda Askell — The Profile
Who Is Sam Altman? — The Profile
Dario Amodei — overview biography
The Profile sends deeply reported profiles of influential people every week. Subscribe free →