Dario Amodei joins John Collison to talk about Anthropic's growth to ~$5 billion in ARR, how AI models show capitalistic impulses, predictions for an agentic future, the economics of model businesses, and the 19th-century concept of vitalism.
Full episode transcript on Substack: https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/a-cheeky-pint-with-anthropic-ceo
Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(00:50) Working with your sibling
(01:43) Building Anthropic with 7 cofounders
(02:52) ~$5 billion in ARR and vertical applications of products
(07:18) Developing a platform-first company
(10:08) Working with the DoD
(11:11) Proving skeptics wrong about revenue projections
(13:13) Capitalistic impulses of AI models
(15:43) AI market structure and players
(16:56) AI models as standalone P&Ls
(20:48) The data wall and styles of learning
(22:20) AI talent wars
(26:04) Pitching Anthropic’s API business to investors
(27:49) Cloud providers vs. AI labs
(29:05) AI customization and Claude for enterprise
(33:01) Dwarkesh’s take on limitations
(36:12) 19th-century notion of vitalism
(37:27) AI in medicine, customer service, and taxes
(40:59) How to solve for hallucinations
(42:41) The double-standard for AI mistakes
(44:14) Evolving from researcher to CEO
(46:59) Designing AGI-pilled products
(47:57) AI-native UIs
(50:09) Model progress and building products
(52:22) Open-source models
(54:43) Keeping Anthropic AGI-pilled
(57:11) AI advancements vs. safety regulations
(01:02:04) How Dario uses AI