Daniela Amodei

Last updated
Daniela Amodei
Born1987 (age 3839)
Education University of California, Santa Cruz (BA)
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forCo-founding Anthropic, Vice President of Safety and Policy at OpenAI
TitlePresident and co-founder of Anthropic
Spouse
(m. 2017)
Children1
Relatives Dario Amodei (brother)
Awards Time 100 Most Influential People in AI (2023)

Daniela Amodei (born 1987) [1] is an American entrepreneur. She is the president and co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, which develops the series of frontier large language models named Claude. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Early life

Her father, Riccardo Amodei, was a leather craftsman born in Italy. Her mother, Elena Engel, a Jewish American born in Chicago, was a project manager for libraries. She is the sister of Dario Amodei. Riccardo developed health problems during their childhood and died when they reached early adulthood. [1] Daniela graduated from Lowell High School. [5] She received a scholarship to study classical flute and studied liberal arts and music, [1] graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. [6]

Career

Amodei started her career in global health and politics, playing a role in a successful congressional campaign in Pennsylvania. She then briefly managed communications for House Representative Matt Cartwright in Washington D.C., before leaving politics for the tech industry. In 2013, she joined the financial service company Stripe as an early employee, before transitioning to OpenAI in 2018. [7] At OpenAI, Amodei managed the team during GPT-2's development before moving into safety and policy. [1] [8] She was the vice president of safety and policy there, but left in 2020 to co-found Anthropic with her brother Dario Amodei. [8] [9] As president of Anthropic, she leads teams focused on AI safety and model alignment. [10]

In September 2023, Daniela and her brother were named as two of the Time 100 Most Influential People in AI (Time100 AI). [9]

Personal life

In August 2017, Daniela married Holden Karnofsky, the co-founder of the effective altruism-based foundation Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy). [11] They have a son. [12]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Levy, Steven (March 28, 2025). "If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born". Wired . ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved December 4, 2025. Dario was born in 1983 and Daniela four years later.
  2. Roose, Kevin (July 11, 2023). "Inside the White-Hot Center of A.I. Doomerism". The New York Times.
  3. Prescott, Katie (June 26, 2024). "Anthropic boss Daniela Amodei makes her pitch for 'trustworthy' AI". www.thetimes.com.
  4. Perrigo, Billy (30 May 2024). "Inside Anthropic, the AI Company Betting That Safety Can Be a Winning Strategy". Time. Retrieved 3 October 2025.
  5. "Lowell Alumni Newsletter Fall 2005 by Lowell Alumni Association - Issuu". issuu.com. 2014-08-23. Retrieved 2024-11-07.
  6. Amodei, Daniela. "Daniela Amodei LinkedIn".
  7. Palazzolo, Stephanie (April 24, 2023). "How Anthropic cofounder Daniela Amodei plans to turn trust and safety into a feature, not a bug" . Business Insider . Archived from the original on May 7, 2023.
  8. 1 2 Sullivan, Mark (September 6, 2023). "How Anthropic's Daniela Amodei is keeping AI from spinning out of control". Fast Company.
  9. 1 2 Will, Henshall; Perrigo, Billy (September 7, 2023). "Time100 AI 2023: Dario and Daniela Amodei". Time.
  10. "Most Powerful Women: Daniela Amodei". Fortune . Retrieved December 4, 2025.
  11. McMillan, Robert; Seetharaman, Deepa (November 22, 2023). "How a Fervent Belief Split Silicon Valley—and Fueled the Blowup at OpenAI" . The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on November 24, 2023.
  12. Bousquette, Isabelle (September 16, 2025). "How an Albino Alligator Became an Obsession Inside an AI Giant" . The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved December 4, 2025.