Daniela Amodei

Literature, politics and Stripe

Amodei graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2009 with a BA in literature and a minor in politics. She helped win a congressional campaign in north-east Pennsylvania, Business Insider reported, then spent a few months on Capitol Hill running scheduling and communications for Congressman Matt Cartwright. Wired says she also worked for years for overseas NGOs.356

In 2013 she joined Stripe as a founding recruiter, when the company had about 40 people. She moved to OpenAI in 2018 and spent about three years there as an engineering manager and vice president. During the work on GPT-2, Wired reported, she was the one managing the team.346

Running Anthropic

When Anthropic announced its first funding round, $124 million in May 2021, it named her as president. The job, as the company describes it, covers research, engineering, product, governance and commercial execution, plus the executive team. By October 2025 she said Anthropic served "over 300,000 business customers".1814

She describes the founding as a move towards something. "We were running towards something versus running away from something," she told Stanford's View From the Top in 2026. On safety teams she told Business Insider in 2023: "So if trust and safety is viewed as an equal partner to all of these other teams, I don't think that necessarily causes friction."312

Asked by Wired about effective altruism, she said: "I'm not the expert on effective altruism. I don't identify with that terminology." Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, and in July 2026 its Long-Term Benefit Trust appointed the former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke.615

FTX money and the Pentagon

TIME reported in 2023 that $500 million of Anthropic's early funding came from the crypto exchange FTX, which later went bankrupt. Wired reported that Sam Bankman-Fried's stake was sold off in 2024. Amazon, by contrast, had put in $8 billion by 2025, according to Fortune.6713

In 2026 Anthropic clashed with the Pentagon. It said talks had stalled over two uses it wanted ruled out, mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons, and that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was directing the department to label it a supply-chain risk. Anthropic said it would fight that in court, and it sued. In October 2026 a defence official told the BBC the Pentagon had stopped using Anthropic's products.111617

In the same TIME profile she said: "We're doing our best, but like, we don't necessarily know what the right answer is."11

Daniela Amodei, year by year

1. 2009

   Graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a BA in literature and a minor in politics.5

2. Before 2013

   Helped win a congressional campaign in northeast Pennsylvania, then ran scheduling and communications for Congressman Matt Cartwright, Business Insider reported.3

3. 2013

   Joined Stripe as a founding recruiter, when it had about 40 people.34

4. 2018

   Moved to OpenAI, where she worked for about three years as an engineering manager and vice president.34

5. Late 2020

   Left OpenAI with a group of colleagues to start Anthropic.67

6. May 2021

   Named as Anthropic's president when it announced a $124 million first round.8

7. Apr 2025

   Anthropic announced more than 100 new roles across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.9

8. Feb 2026

   Listed on Anthropic's board alongside Dario Amodei, Yasmin Razavi, Jay Kreps and Reed Hastings.10

9. Apr 2026

   Profiled by TIME, which described the Pentagon standoff and Anthropic's $380 billion valuation.11

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