Dario Amodei
American AI researcher; co-founder and chief executive of Anthropic
| Dario Amodei
| |
|---|---|
| Image | .jpg) Amodei at TechCrunch Disrupt, September 2023 |
| Born | 1983 (Forbes) |
| Nationality | American |
| Residence | San Francisco, California (Forbes) |
| Occupation | AI researcher and executive |
| Known for | Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic |
| Sibling(s) | Daniela Amodei |
| Education | Stanford University (BS, physics); Princeton University (PhD, biophysics) |
Dario Amodei (born 1983) is an American artificial intelligence researcher. He is co-founder, chief executive and a director of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude models. He founded it in January 2021 with six other former OpenAI staff, including his sister Daniela Amodei.[1][2] On 10 November 2026 the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list ranked Amodei 224th in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$13.6 billion; Forbes lists the source of wealth as artificial intelligence.[1][3] In the annual World's Billionaires list published in 2026, Forbes had ranked Amodei 567th, at US$7.0 billion.[4] Forbes says private investors valued Anthropic at US$965 billion in May 2026.[1] In 2026 the company filed for a Nasdaq listing. Its amended registration statement of 10 November 2026 showed him as the beneficial owner of 245,259,100 Class A shares, including 4,621,120 shares he votes under proxies.[2]
Education and early career
Amodei has a BS in physics from Stanford University and a PhD in biophysics from Princeton University, and he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine.[2] He was a senior research scientist at Google Brain from October 2015 to June 2016. From July 2016 to December 2020 he worked at OpenAI, latterly as vice-president of research.[2]
OpenAI research
Forbes says Amodei co-invented reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) at OpenAI. Anthropic's filing says Tom Brown and Amodei co-invented "deep RLHF".[1][2] He was the last-listed author of the 2020 GPT-3 paper, Language Models are Few-Shot Learners, and of the 2020 paper Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models.[5][6]
Anthropic
The seven co-founders started Anthropic in January 2021.[2] TechCrunch described them as leaving OpenAI after disagreements with its leadership over how AI should be built.[7] Forbes says Anthropic has partnerships with Alphabet and Amazon.[1] Fortune reported that Amodei received US$17.96 million in total compensation in 2025, including a salary of US$654,167.[8]
Listing and ownership
Anthropic filed to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "ANT", with an indicated price range of US$70–78 a share in its 10 November 2026 amended filing. It said that the seven co-founders had each pledged to give 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to philanthropy, describing the pledges as voluntary and revocable rather than legally binding.[2] A single Class F share held by a founders' LLC will carry 50.1% of the votes.[2] TechCrunch reported that each co-founder would sell 3,378,378 shares in the offering, worth just under US$250 million each at the midpoint of the range.[7] Fortune estimated that each co-founder owned about 1.4% of the company on a fully diluted basis.[8] Fortune noted that 4.6 million of the shares in Amodei's total are held in donor-advised funds. He votes them under proxy agreements but no longer owns them.[8]
Dispute with the Department of War
Anthropic's filing says that in February 2026, after the company stated that its technology should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, the President directed federal agencies to stop using it and the Secretary of War ordered it designated a "supply-chain risk to national security". A federal district court in California largely granted Anthropic summary judgment on 27 August 2026, but on 25 September 2026 a divided D.C. Circuit panel upheld one of the designations. Anthropic has asked for a rehearing by the full court.[2]
Views
In his October 2024 essay Machines of Loving Grace, Amodei wrote that "most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be".[9] He proposed an "entente strategy", in which a coalition of democracies would seek an advantage in powerful AI by securing its supply chain, scaling quickly, and blocking or delaying adversaries' access to chips and semiconductor equipment.[9]
Political activity
FEC records for the 2022–2026 cycles show one itemised federal contribution by Amodei: US$1 million to Public First on 4 May 2026.[10]
Across the 1 non-memo records retrieved for the 2022–2026 cycles, the filtered total is US$1,000,000 (a lower bound). The largest recipient committees, as named in the filings, were PUBLIC FIRST (US$1,000,000).[10]
| Cycle | Total (US$, lower bound) | Records | Largest recipient committees (as filed with the FEC) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $1,000,000 | 1 | PUBLIC FIRST ($1,000,000) |
Philanthropy
Like the other co-founders, Amodei has pledged to give 80% of his personal Anthropic equity to philanthropy. Anthropic describes this as a voluntary and revocable commitment.[2]
Wealth
Forbes classes Amodei as self-made, with wealth from artificial intelligence.[1]
Wealth history
Forbes has included this entry in its annual World's Billionaires list in 2 of the editions from 2001 to 2026 checked for this profile, starting with 2025. The table gives the rank and estimated net worth in each annual list, and, where applicable, the rank and estimate in the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans.[4][1]
| Year | World's Billionaires rank | Net worth (US$ bn) | Forbes 400 rank | Forbes 400 net worth (US$ bn) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 2623 | 1.2 | – | – |
| 2026 | 567 | 7.0 | 75 | 15.5 |
International and political links
This section uses the same ten headings for every profile in this series. Only specific, sourced actions are included; company-level and foundation-level actions are labelled as such. Where nothing was found, the entry reads "No documented involvement found in sources checked."
Israel (investments, operations, donations, contracts, statements)
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
Zionist or pro-Israel organisations and lobbying groups
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
Jewish communal charities
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
Gulf states
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
China
In Machines of Loving Grace Amodei argued for a coalition of democracies that would block or delay adversaries' access to chips and semiconductor equipment. He wrote that the US appeared headed for "a second Cold War with a resurgent authoritarian bloc".[9]
Russia
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
India
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
Palestinian or Arab causes
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
Home government
Anthropic's filing says that in February 2026, after the company stated that its technology should not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, the President directed federal agencies to stop using it and the Secretary of War ordered it designated a "supply-chain risk to national security". A federal district court in California largely granted Anthropic summary judgment on 27 August 2026, but on 25 September 2026 a divided D.C. Circuit panel upheld one of the designations. Anthropic has asked for a rehearing by the full court.[2]
Other international links
No documented involvement found in sources checked.
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Forbes, Forbes profile record for Dario Amodei (Forbes data feed behind forbes.com/profile/dario-amodei/) Forbes, live record, read 10 November 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Anthropic, PBC, Form S-1/A (Amendment No. 2) registration statement U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 10 November 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Forbes, Forbes Real-Time Billionaires data feed Forbes, live; downloaded 10 November 2026 23:28 UTC, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Forbes, Forbes World's Billionaires list data feed, annual editions 2001–2026 (one file per year at this path with the year substituted; all 26 files downloaded and read) Forbes, annual lists; downloaded 20 October 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Tom B. Brown et al., Language Models are Few-Shot Learners arXiv:2005.14165, 28 May 2020, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Jared Kaplan et al., Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models arXiv:2001.08361, 23 January 2020, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Julie Bort, All 7 Anthropic founders will each cash out about $250M in IPO TechCrunch, 10 November 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Nick Lichtenberg, Anthropic’s 7 cofounders are each worth $14 billion already—and that could double in an IPO. They’ve promised to give most of it away Fortune, 26 October 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Dario Amodei, Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better darioamodei.com, October 2024, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 U.S. Federal Election Commission, OpenFEC Schedule A (itemised individual contributions) query, contributor name "AMODEI, DARIO"; 2026 cycle shown in link, the 2022, 2024 and 2026 cycles were queried together with the same parameters; top 100 records by amount; records filtered by employer/occupation and name, memo entries excluded U.S. Federal Election Commission, data as filed; queried 10 November 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.