On the eve of the largest IPO in history, Anthropic CEO's rare, lengthy article confronts doubts head-on!
Dario Amodei almost never touches social media.
But at this critical moment where the IPO valuation is being pushed to $2 trillion, he unusually published a long article, directly addressing Silicon Valley's biggest doubts about him.
For a CEO known for caution, who even emphasizes risks during product launches, the weight of these words is heavier than any grand statement.
A person who almost never makes public statements on social media, choosing to step forward at the moment of highest valuation and fiercest controversy—this in itself is a signal.
The Stir: Silicon Valley's Biggest Doubt About Anthropic
The catalyst for the entire conversation was a claim circulating the day before: 'multiple reliable people' told American tech investment heavyweight Gavin Baker:
Dario once said that Anthropic might one day, in some sense, be the world's only private company.
Regarding this claim, Anthropic's Brand and Communications Officer Sasha de Marigny promptly debunked it, but it was already too late.
Think about it, in that vision, a kind of Anthropic supremacist vision, there would be only Anthropic in the world, then national governments, nothing else.
Anthropic's Sholto Douglas immediately dismissed it as nonsense:
Anthropic's biggest concern is precisely the excessive concentration of economic power.
Subsequently, Gavin posted a long response: The problem is, many people in Silicon Valley really believe it. Dario Amodei has already lost.
To be clear, as I outlined on the podcast, I think Anthropic has deep competitive advantages and is an amazing company.
The irony is that a few months ago, the main risk I saw for Anthropic was precisely Dario's own words and actions.
Jensen Huang also once commented on Dario:
First, he thinks AI is too scary, so only they should be the ones doing it......
Second, AI is too expensive, so no one else should do it......
Third, AI is incredibly powerful, everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it.
Finally, Jensen advocated for responsible AI development in an open environment, "Not in a dark room, then tell me it's safe."
In July, Musk also subtly criticized Dario's communication style: "If you first scare everyone, then say we're going to release this scary thing, of course people will be alert to it."
Now, Dario has strongly rebutted: This is a false dichotomy.
He deconstructs Silicon Valley's most popular logic: Regulation = Regulatory Capture = Power Concentration.
Dario says this formula oversimplifies complex issues. He gives an analogy: The court system oversees everyone, but it still protects the weak better than mob justice. Institutions make power belong to rules, not to any individual.
He cites California SB 53 bill, supported by Anthropic, as an example: AI companies with revenue below $500 million are completely unconstrained. In other words, the rules only restrict the most cutting-edge players, while small companies benefit instead.
"Every policy we design places more costs on frontier companies while benefiting smaller competitors."
He believes that if the right "rules of the game" can be established, it is entirely possible to achieve three things simultaneously:
1. Address AI risks in cybersecurity, biosecurity, and alignment;
2. Use institutions to constrain the power of frontier AI companies;
3. Preserve space for open-weight models to develop while taking measures for their specific risks.
He also supports the idea proposed by Demis Hassabis of establishing an AI regulatory body similar to FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).
But what really pricked up ears was his shift to talk about ambition.
Anthropic is ramping up its investment in biomedical AI at full speed.
Ambition: AI Cures All Diseases
His judgment is extremely radical: In the next 5-10 years, AI will be able to cure most human diseases.
He believes:
So far, the most accurate and powerful criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is actually: We haven't delivered on those grand promises about 'using AI to benefit the world.'
The only antidote is not slogans, but "Only when we can really cure cancer will the public trust AI."
Anthropic is rapidly increasing investment in biology and medicine. We hope to achieve remarkable results in the coming years and see some initial glimmers in the coming months.
He predicts that within 5 to 10 years, AI will be able to cure most human diseases. He gives a specific timeline.
This confirms The Wall Street Journal's report that Anthropic is making a major bet on the healthcare field to alleviate the rising negative sentiment among the American public towards AI.
In October 2024, his judgment was even bolder: Strong AI could compress 50 to 100 years of biological progress into 5 to 10 years.
At that time, many people treated this as a vision, to be taken with a grain of salt.
This time is different, he says, in the coming months, glimmers of early research will be made public.
Then he tells a personal story—his father died from Hepatitis C.
In 2006, Dario Amodei, 23 years old, was studying theoretical physics at Princeton.
After years suffering from the chronic disease Hepatitis C (HCV), his father Riccardo couldn't hold on and eventually passed away.
Back then, the cure rate for this disease was about fifty-fifty. Whether you lived or died was a matter of fate.
By 2010, specific oral medications appeared, like Sofosbuvir. Overnight, the HCV cure rate skyrocketed from 50% to 95%.
People in a similar situation to Riccardo, swallowing a few pills, could mostly be cured.
Four years too late, his father didn't wait for it. He was gone, everything was too late. The son wishes to care for his parent, but the parent is no longer there.
Amodei later repeatedly brought up this event:
Someone researched a treatment for this disease, really cured it, and saved many lives.
But even more people could have been saved.
In a sense, Amodei's life thereafter has been a response to his father's death.
Amodei shifted from theoretical physics to biology, hoping to directly research human diseases and biological problems.
But he soon found life too complex, already beyond the capability of a single human scientist.
So he eventually turned his gaze towards AI.
This is also why his acceptance criterion for "AI curing diseases" is only one: Don't shout "AI will cure cancer," actually cure cancer.
Until then, he doesn't issue blank checks. He is blunt: Public trust in AI will not come from press conferences and benchmark tests, it will only come from one thing—AI actually saving lives.
This isn't just sentiment. On the eve of the IPO, this is a narrative reconstruction.
On the Eve of IPO, Narrative Reconstruction
The timing of this statement is thought-provoking. According to the Financial Times, Anthropic could go public as early as this October, with valuations given by some investors reaching $2 trillion—surpassing SpaceX's $1.77 trillion, setting a new record for the largest IPO in history.
It took only five years from 2021 when Dario left OpenAI with his sister Daniela to start Anthropic, to today's valuation surpassing his former employer.
Supporting this number is a revenue curve steep to an absurd degree: Annualized revenue of $1 billion in January 2025, breaking $47 billion in May 2026. In less than 18 months, 47x growth. Enterprise API market share at 32%, surpassing OpenAI for the first time to take the top spot.
But Dario clearly doesn't want Anthropic to be defined only as "the company behind the coding wizard Claude Code."
Personally stepping forward on the eve of the IPO to talk about regulation, curing cancer, he is redefining Anthropic's narrative: Not just a competitor to OpenAI, but a company trying to use AI to solve humanity's most fundamental problems.
Whether the market buys into it or not, we'll find out in October.
References
https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758816376807762
https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2088758819304443967
https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2088611616577253502
This article is from WeChat public account "新智元" (New Zhiyuan), author: David
