Inside Anthropic

Who founded the company behind Claude, who runs it, who owns it and where its IPO stands. Researched by Autumn, with a source on every fact.

Dario AmodeiCEO

Daniela AmodeiPresident

Jared KaplanChief Science Officer

Jack ClarkHead of Public Benefit

Chris OlahInterpretability lead

Ben MannLabs co-lead

Sam McCandlishChief Architect

Tom BrownChief Compute Officer

2021

founded

$965B

valuation, May 2026

$65B

revenue run-rate, Jul 2026

~2,300

people, Dec 2025

289

sources

Explore · People42 profilesCo-founders, the executive team and the researchers behind Claude.Anthropic's leadership team and org chart Explore · Talent4 of 15people on Anthropic's leadership page worked at Stripe, plus the OpenAI and DeepMind hiring waves.Where Anthropic's people came from Explore · Papers10 of 31authors of the GPT-3 research paper later joined Anthropic. Who wrote the papers behind it.The research papers behind Anthropic Explore · Money$965Bvaluation at the Series H, with every round, the revenue run-rate and the IPO status.Anthropic IPO, valuation and revenue

Timeline

From the founding in 2021 to the confidential IPO filing reported in June 2026.

Swipe sideways to see 2021 to 2026

Major model release Other release Funding round, sized by amount raised

Valuation

From $61.5B at the Series E in March 2025 to $965B at the Series H in May 2026. Post-money valuation at each priced round that disclosed one, a reported 2023 figure, and where shares have traded since.

$18.4B

$61.5B

$183B

$380B

$965B

$1.5T

Confirmed by Anthropic or an investor Reported by the press

Sources¹reuters.com ²anthropic.com ³anthropic.com ⁴anthropic.com ⁵anthropic.com ⁶businessinsider.com

The IPO, revenue and who owns Anthropic

Where the team worked before

Of the 42 founders, leaders and researchers Autumn profiled, 13 had worked at OpenAI and 15 at Google or DeepMind at some point before joining. Internships are not counted; the talent page counts only the job each person left to join.

people at Anthropic in Apr 2022, when it raised its Series B.

~2,300

by Dec 2025, as Fortune reported.

Sources¹anthropic.com ²fortune.com

Where Anthropic's people came from

Research papers they wrote before Anthropic

At OpenAI and Google, Anthropic's founders co-wrote some of the most influential AI research papers of 2016 to 2020. Ten of the 31 authors of the GPT-3 paper, an early forerunner of ChatGPT, and six of the ten authors of the scaling-laws paper later joined Anthropic. Each square is one author, in the paper's order.

2016Concrete ProblemsDario Amodei, later at AnthropicChris Olah, later at AnthropicJacob SteinhardtPaul ChristianoJohn Schulman, later at AnthropicDan Mané3 of 6

2017RL from human preferencesPaul ChristianoJan Leike, later at AnthropicTom Brown, later at AnthropicMiljan MarticShane LeggDario Amodei, later at Anthropic3 of 6

2018Building BlocksChris Olah, later at AnthropicArvind SatyanarayanIan JohnsonShan Carter, later at AnthropicLudwig SchubertKatherine YeAlexander Mordvintsev2 of 7

2019Fine-tuning from preferencesDaniel Ziegler, later at AnthropicNisan StiennonJeffrey Wu, later at AnthropicTom Brown, later at AnthropicAlec RadfordDario Amodei, later at AnthropicPaul ChristianoGeoffrey Irving4 of 8

2019GPT-2Alec RadfordJeffrey Wu, later at AnthropicRewon ChildDavid LuanDario Amodei, later at AnthropicIlya Sutskever2 of 6

2020GPT-3Tom Brown, later at AnthropicBen Mann, later at AnthropicNick RyderMelanie SubbiahJared Kaplan, later at AnthropicPrafulla DhariwalArvind NeelakantanPranav ShyamGirish SastryAmanda Askell, later at AnthropicSandhini AgarwalAriel Herbert-VossGretchen KruegerTom Henighan, later at AnthropicRewon ChildAditya RameshDaniel Ziegler, later at AnthropicJeffrey Wu, later at AnthropicClemens WinterChristopher HesseMark ChenEric SiglerMateusz LitwinScott GrayBenjamin ChessJack Clark, later at AnthropicChristopher BernerSam McCandlish, later at AnthropicAlec RadfordIlya SutskeverDario Amodei, later at Anthropic10 of 31

2020Summarize from feedbackNisan StiennonLong OuyangJeffrey Wu, later at AnthropicDaniel Ziegler, later at AnthropicRyan LoweChelsea VossAlec RadfordDario Amodei, later at AnthropicPaul Christiano3 of 9

2020Scaling laws (images, video)Tom Henighan, later at AnthropicJared Kaplan, later at AnthropicMor KatzMark ChenChristopher HesseJacob JacksonHeewoo JunTom Brown, later at AnthropicPrafulla DhariwalScott GrayChris HallacyBen Mann, later at AnthropicAlec RadfordAditya RameshNick RyderDaniel Ziegler, later at AnthropicJohn Schulman, later at AnthropicDario Amodei, later at AnthropicSam McCandlish, later at Anthropic8 of 19

2020Scaling lawsJared Kaplan, later at AnthropicSam McCandlish, later at AnthropicTom Henighan, later at AnthropicTom Brown, later at AnthropicBenjamin ChessRewon ChildScott GrayAlec RadfordJeffrey Wu, later at AnthropicDario Amodei, later at Anthropic6 of 10

2020Zoom InChris Olah, later at AnthropicNick CammarataLudwig SchubertGabriel GohMichael PetrovShan Carter, later at Anthropic2 of 6

Later joined Anthropic Co-founded Anthropic Joined, since left No record of joining

Every author of the research papers behind Anthropic

Facts about the company

Structure

It is a public benefit corporation

Anthropic is a Delaware public benefit corporation. A separate Long-Term Benefit Trust, with no financial stake, holds a special class of stock (Class T) that lets it elect a growing share of the board.

Sources¹anthropic.com

Board

Reed Hastings is on the board

Reed Hastings joined the board in May 2025, appointed by the Long-Term Benefit Trust. The board also includes Dario and Daniela Amodei, Yasmin Razavi, Chris Liddell and Vas Narasimhan.

Sources¹anthropic.com ²anthropic.com

The name

Where the name Claude may come from

Some employees treat the name as a nod to Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, according to press reports. Anthropic has not given an official explanation.

Sources¹en.wikipedia.org

Model welfare

Claude can end abusive conversations

Since August 2025, Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can end a rare set of persistently abusive chats, an outcome of Anthropic's research program on model welfare.

Kyle Fish

Sources¹anthropic.com ²anthropic.com

Claude Code

Claude Code reached a $1 billion run-rate

Claude Code reached $1 billion in run-rate revenue in November 2025, six months after it became available to the public. Anthropic then bought Bun, the JavaScript runtime.

Boris Cherny

Sources¹anthropic.com

Compute

It uses a SpaceX data center

In May 2026 Anthropic agreed to use all of the compute at SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center, more than 300 megawatts and over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs.

Sources¹anthropic.com

Ads

Claude has no ads

In February 2026 Anthropic said Claude will carry no ads, sponsored links or paid product placement.

Sources¹anthropic.com

Constitution

Claude's constitution is public

The constitution that guides Claude's training was rewritten in January 2026 and released in full under a CC0 public-domain license.

Amanda Askell

Sources¹anthropic.com

Interpretability

Looking inside the model

Anthropic's 2023 Towards Monosemanticity paper split a layer of 512 neurons into more than 4,000 more interpretable features.

Chris Olah

Sources¹anthropic.com

More on Anthropic

The peopleAnthropic's leadership team and org chartAn org chart of the co-founders, the executive team and the researchers behind Claude, with a profile for each.Open →The talentWhere Anthropic's people came fromThe OpenAI founding wave, the later DeepMind wave, the Stripe pipeline into leadership and the YC founders who joined.Open →The papersThe research papers behind AnthropicWho wrote the GPT-3 paper, the scaling laws and RLHF: every author of ten AI research papers from 2016 to 2020, and who later joined Anthropic.Open →The moneyAnthropic IPO, valuation and revenueEvery funding round, the revenue run-rate, who owns Anthropic and where the IPO stands.Open →

How we made this

Research task Completed

Prompt

Research the people behind Anthropic (the AI company that makes Claude): all of its co-founders, its current executive leadership team, and the most publicly prominent researchers and technical leaders (people known for authored papers, public talks, books, newsletters, or named public roles). Target about 40 people… Rules: give a credible source URL for every field, preferring primary sources…

People: 42
Autumn research tasks: 50
Sources: 289