Amodei pitches Anthropic IPO investors on safety focus and a 'no jerks' culture

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei told investors the company is "very paranoid" about AI safety, speaking with Jamie Dimon at an event hosted by JPMorgan Chase, one of the lead underwriters of Anthropic's share offering, AFP reports.

Amodei said that focus shaped the company's strategy, steering it toward business customers and coding tools rather than consumer chatbots. "We deliberately chose enterprise as a focus because we understood that it was synergistic with our focus on safety," he said. He predicted that fields such as scientific research would be "much larger than coding, in the same way that coding was much larger than chatbots," but added that Anthropic "tends to under promise and over deliver."

Amodei said he spends "probably 40, 50 percent" of his time on talent and culture. Every hire goes through a culture interview, and the company has turned down technically gifted candidates who did not fit. "We don't want people who are jerks," he said.

Anthropic set a price range of $70 to $78 per share this week, and the stock is expected to begin trading on Thursday under the ticker ANT. At the top of the range the offering would raise up to $64.4 billion and value the company at about $1.4 trillion, including employee stock options and restricted shares, according to AFP.