Daniela Amodei
Unicorn founderCo-founder & President at Anthropic · VP of People, then VP of Safety and Policy at OpenAI · Early employee — Risk Manager at Stripe
San Francisco, CA
FoundedAnthropic$965B
Find your path to Daniela
665 people in our graph share verified history with Daniela — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.
About
Daniela Amodei co-founded Anthropic in 2021 with her brother Dario and five other OpenAI colleagues, and as president runs everything at the company that is not research — operations, policy, commercial, and the safety and alignment organisations. Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation in May 2026 with annualised revenue at $47 billion, ranked first on CNBC's Disruptor 50, and filed confidentially for a listing that June. An English-literature graduate who started in global health and on a congressional campaign, she built risk and recruiting at Stripe through its hypergrowth years before running people and then safety and policy at OpenAI.
Likely email· guessed from name + firm domain, not firm-published
- d•••@anthropic.comreveal75% confident
Beyond investing
- Founded
- Co-founded Anthropic in 2021 and serves as President, running operations, policy, and go-to-market.
- Education
- Studied English literature at UC Santa Cruz on a classical flute scholarship. Studied at University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, English Literature)
- Communities
- Began her career in global health and development — the IRIS Center at the University of Maryland and the Ugandan NGO Conservation Through Public Health.
- Awards
- Named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, alongside her brother. TIME (2023): Named to the inaugural TIME100 list of the most influential people in AI. Fortune (2025): Named to the Most Powerful Women list. CNBC Disruptor 50 (2026): Anthropic ranked No. 1 on the 2026 list.
- Hobbies
- Studied classical flute on scholarship before pivoting to English literature.
- Family
- Sibling co-founder: her brother Dario Amodei is Anthropic's CEO. Married to Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of Open Philanthropy, since 2017. Co-founded Anthropic with her brother Dario Amodei; married to Holden Karnofsky, a co-founder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy.
- More
- Early Stripe employee (2013–2018), building risk and recruiting during hypergrowth. Argues publicly that humanities training is 'more important than ever' in the AI era, and shapes Anthropic hiring accordingly. Anthropic (2026): Closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation in May 2026, with annualised revenue reaching $47 billion. Anthropic (2026): Filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on 1 June 2026 with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan leading; still private as of August 2026.
Mentioned above: the Stripe mafia → · the University of California, Santa Cruz mafia →
From published sources — common ground for a warm intro.
Co-founder & President at Anthropic
Intro paths
In turn, Daniela can intro founders to Anthropic's investors below.
Anthropic's investors · 92
.png)
Co-founders at Anthropic
VP of People, then VP of Safety and Policy at OpenAI
Intro paths
In turn, Daniela can intro founders to OpenAI's investors below.
OpenAI's investors · 61
Co-founders at OpenAI
Early employee — Risk Manager at StripeYC S09
Intro paths
Daniela went through Y Combinator (Summer 2009) — any YC alum in your network can reach them through the YC community.
In turn, Daniela can intro founders to Stripe's investors below.
Stripe's investors · 67
.jpeg){kind=logo}
.jpeg)
Co-founders at Stripe
Experience
- AnthropicPresident and co-foundercurrent2020 — present
- OpenAIVP of Safety and Policy2020
- OpenAIEngineering Manager + VP of People2018 — 2020San Francisco Bay Area
- StripeRisk Manager: Core Operations, User Policy, and Underwriting2016 — 2018San Francisco Bay Area
- StripeRisk Program Manager2015 — 2016
- StripeLead Technical Recruiter2013 — 2015
- U.S. House of RepresentativesScheduling and Communications2013Washington D.C. Metro Area
- Matt Cartwright for CongressField Director2012Scranton, Pennsylvania Area
- Matt Cartwright for CongressDeputy Field Director2012Scranton, Pennsylvania Area
- Conservation Through Public HealthFellow2011 — 2012Kampala, Uganda
- IRIS Center,University of Maryland,College ParkBusiness Development2010 — 2011Washington D.C. Metro Area
Public positions
She treats the operating layer as load-bearing for safety: who a lab hires, what it commits to publicly and what it is willing to sell are the mechanisms by which a research position becomes real, or fails to. It is why the president of a research company came up through risk, recruiting and policy rather than through research.
2021 · Why Anthropic exists
The organisations building the most capable systems should also be doing the safety research, because the two cannot be usefully separated — and a company, rather than a lab or a nonprofit, is the structure that can fund it at the required scale.
The founding position, and the thing her operating role exists to make true.
2023 · Building a company around safety
Safety commitments have to be built into hiring, policy and commercial decisions rather than announced alongside them — which is an operating problem before it is a research one.
The clearest statement of what a president does at a research company.
2026 · AI economics ahead of an IPO
She publicly defended the economics of frontier AI as the company moved toward a listing, with annualised revenue at $47 billion and Anthropic projecting the first quarterly operating profit by a frontier lab.
The most consequential public argument she has made, and the one a listing will settle.
Prediction record
The founding bet — that a lab organised around safety could be commercially competitive with labs that were not — has been answered emphatically in valuation and revenue terms. Whether frontier AI economics hold up under public-market scrutiny is the open question a listing will settle.
A safety-first lab could be commercially competitive with labs that were not
Correct2021 · Years
Anthropic reached a $965 billion post-money valuation in May 2026 on annualised revenue of $47 billion, and ranked first on CNBC's Disruptor 50.
The counterfactual is untestable — nobody can say what the same team would have built without the constraint.
Frontier AI economics work at scale, and Anthropic will post the first quarterly operating profit by a frontier lab
Open2026 · Months
Projected for Q2 2026; the company was still private as of August 2026 with a confidential S-1 under SEC review.
She is the executive making the case ahead of a listing.
Investment themes
3 documented themes from Daniela's essays, talks and portfolio, grouped by what they say about founders.
▶AI & media2
Safety and commercial scale are the same programme2021
Anthropic was founded on the position that the labs building frontier systems should be the ones doing the safety research, and that commercial success funds and disciplines that work rather than competing with it. She has defended the economics of that position publicly in the run-up to a listing.
For founders: A safety story that does not survive contact with a P&L will not persuade her.
Trust is the enterprise wedge2023
Anthropic's commercial strategy has leaned on being the AI vendor a regulated enterprise can defend choosing — the argument that safety work and interpretability research are a go-to-market asset, not a cost centre.
For founders: In regulated markets, the compliance story is the sales story.
▶More themes1
Operations are the product's other half2021
Her career is the operating spine of hypergrowth companies — risk and recruiting at Stripe, people and then safety-and-policy at OpenAI, and now everything at Anthropic that is not research. The consistent claim is that a frontier lab is bottlenecked as much by hiring, policy and go-to-market as by model quality.
For founders: The operating plan is not the boring half of the pitch.
Podcasts & interviews
featuring Daniela AmodeiAnthropic president Daniela Amodei defends AI economics as revenue hits $47bn
theaiinsider.tech · theaiinsider.tech
Daniela Amodei: AI Hurricane
Grit (Kleiner Perkins) · open.spotify.com
First Block: Interview with Daniela Amodei
Stripe First Block
Anthropic President Amodei on the Future of Claude
Bloomberg Technology
TIME100 AI: Daniela Amodei
time.com · time.com
Frequently asked questions
- Who is Daniela Amodei?
- Daniela Amodei co-founded Anthropic in 2021 with her brother Dario and five other OpenAI colleagues, and as president runs everything at the company that is not research — operations, policy, commercial, and the safety and alignment organisations. Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation in May 2026 with annualised revenue at $47 billion, ranked first on CNBC's Disruptor 50, and filed confidentially for a listing that June. An English-literature graduate who started in global health and on a congressional campaign, she built risk and recruiting at Stripe through its hypergrowth years before running people and then safety and policy at OpenAI.
- Where does Daniela Amodei work?
- Daniela Amodei is Co-founder & President of Anthropic and VP of People, then VP of Safety and Policy at OpenAI and Early employee — Risk Manager at Stripe.
- What companies did Daniela Amodei found?
- Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic.
- Where did Daniela Amodei go to school?
- Daniela Amodei studied at University of California, Santa Cruz (Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English Literature).
- What awards has Daniela Amodei received?
- Named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, alongside her brother. TIME (2023): Named to the inaugural TIME100 list of the most influential people in AI. Fortune (2025): Named to the Most Powerful Women list. CNBC Disruptor 50 (2026): Anthropic ranked No. 1 on the 2026 list.
- What podcasts and interviews feature Daniela Amodei?
- Tracked appearances include "Anthropic president Daniela Amodei defends AI economics as revenue hits $47bn", "Daniela Amodei: AI Hurricane", "First Block: Interview with Daniela Amodei", and 2 more.
Founder mafias
Stripe mafia152
Also came through, then founded or led a company.
+ 145 more
OpenAI mafia103
Also came through, then founded or led a company.
+ 96 more
University of California, Santa Cruz mafia62
Also came through, then founded or led a company.
+ 55 more
Same school
Also attended University of California, Santa Cruz132
.avif)
+ 126 more
Shared employers
Also worked at Anthropic125
+ 119 more
Also worked at OpenAI180
+ 174 more
Also worked at Stripe234
+ 228 more
Also worked at U.S. House of Representatives174
+ 168 more