The Anthropic Story: Founded by OpenAI Defectors

From OpenAI to Anthropic

In 2021, a major split occurred in the AI world. A group of top researchers at OpenAI decided to leave and start their own company.

The reason? A fundamental disagreement about AI safety.

The Founders

Dario Amodei - CEO

• Background: Former VP of Research at OpenAI
• Expertise: Physicist turned AI researcher
• Vision: Safe and beneficial AI for humanity

Daniela Amodei - President

• Background: Former VP of Operations at OpenAI
• Expertise: Business operations and management
• Role: Building company culture and operations

The Founding Team

9 other researchers joined the Amodei siblings from OpenAI, including:

• Tom Brown (Lead author of GPT-3)
• Chris Olah (Neural network interpretability expert)
• Sam McCandlish (Principal researcher)

Why Did They Leave OpenAI?

1. Safety Disagreements

The founders felt OpenAI was moving too fast toward commercialization at the expense of safety research.

2. Nonprofit to Profit Transition

When OpenAI restructured to become a "capped-profit" company (2019), concerns began to mount.

3. A Different Vision

They wanted to build a company with AI safety at its core—not as an afterthought.

Anthropic's Philosophy

Constitutional AI

Anthropic developed a new methodology called "Constitutional AI":

• Training models on a set of "principles"
• Self-monitoring and self-correction
• Greater transparency in behavior

Safety Focus

• 50% of the company works on safety research
• Publishing open research on AI risks
• Developing tools to understand model behavior

Funding and Growth

Major Funding Rounds:

Total Funding: Over $7 billion

Valuation

In 2024, Anthropic reached an $18 billion valuation, making it one of the highest-valued AI companies.

Anthropic's Products

Claude (Main Model)

• Claude 1 (2023)
• Claude 2 (2023)
• Claude 3 - Haiku, Sonnet, Opus (2024)
• Claude 3.5 Sonnet (2024)
• Claude 4 (2025)

Claude Code

• AI-powered coding tool
• Works in Terminal
• Advanced code understanding and generation

API for Developers

• Enterprise API
• Amazon Bedrock integration
• Enterprise support

Anthropic vs OpenAI

Why Does This Matter?

For Developers:

• Claude is known for coding excellence
• Claude Code is a powerful development tool
• Understanding the background helps with better usage

For Business Owners:

• Anthropic is a trusted enterprise partner
• Safety focus means lower risk
• Products designed for enterprise use

What's Next in the Series?

In the next article, we'll dive deep into Claude Code specifically:

• What is it?
• How is it different from ChatGPT?
• Why do developers prefer it?

Read Next: What is Claude Code?