Anyone who has managed a large team knows that the people side of the job has a way of consuming everything else. Amodei’s arrangement frees him to focus almost entirely on strategy, culture, research direction, and sweeping essays on the future of civilization (with footnotes). “It’s incredibly freeing,” he tells Chang.

It’s a highly unusual structure. OpenAI’s Sam Altman reportedly has around half a dozen direct reports, which is far more standard, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang — another extreme outlier — has many dozens.

Amodei also noted that Anthropic is unusual in another way: all seven of its co-founders are still with the company, including the Amodei siblings. “We’re basically the only company in the space” that can make that claim, he said.

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