Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, said the first one-person $1 billion company will be built by the end of the year as entrepreneurs use artificial intelligence tools to automate functions from marketing to data analysis.
The AI start-up co-founder said that the tools meant there was “an enormous ability for one person or a tiny set of people to do a set of things that are incredible”, whereas previously it would have taken years to build up the resources required to develop a business idea.
Speaking at a developer conference hosted by Anthropic, he said: “I think we’re actually on track to achieve it [the first $1 billion company created by one person]. It hasn’t quite happened yet. There’s been like two-person companies that are $1 billion, both with AI.”
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He added: “I think we move from the models are writing code, to the models are helping us think of software engineering as a task, to the models are helping us think of, like, how can I build a business or an economic unit as a task?”
Anthropic’s Claude chatbot competes in the corporate world as a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Its products include Claude Code, an agent for computer programming, and Claude Cowork, which can autonomously handle tasks such as meeting scheduling.
Katelyn Lesse, head of platform engineering at Anthropic, said: “I think it can totally happen [a single person build a $1 billion company] … especially because, for example, the platform gives you a lot of tools to be able to build agents.
“Like you can, if you’re a person just trying to get stuff done, build an agent that does marketing. You can build an agent that does data analysis. You can build an agent that kind of does all these different functions, and you can just get so much more done with less of your own time.
“So, you know, similar to just how we’re seeing engineering teams be able to, in smaller pods, be able to get more work done at any given moment, I think whole companies can do a lot more interesting automation.”
Angela Jiang, head of product, platform, at Anthropic, said the capabilities are already in place for an “AI native” individual who has “a lot of agency and imagination” to potentially build a $1 billion business.
She said: “They obviously live in kind of like the bleeding edge. And I think we’re just waiting for, you know, a moment where one of their ideas really catches on, and they’re able to kind of crack open the market for it.”
Elon MuskReuters
Anthropic on Wednesday said it had reached a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to buy computing power from SpaceX’s giant data centre, Colossus 1, in Memphis, Tennessee. The facility houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month.
Amodei told developers that the company is “working as quickly as possible to provide more” capacity and would “pass that compute on to you as soon as we can.”
He said the company tried to plan for 10-fold growth per year, but revenue and usage increased 80-fold in the first quarter on an annualised basis, which he said explains why it’s been so hard to keep up with demand.
Anthropic said it is also interested in working with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of space-based orbital data centres.
The tie-up marks a detente in the relationship between Amodei and Musk, who runs competing AI company xAI and has previously claimed that Anthropic’s AI is “evil” and “hates Whites & Asians, especially Chinese, heterosexuals and men”.
In a statement on X on Wednesday, Musk said: “By way of background for those who care, I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed.
“Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about doing the right thing. No one set off my evil detector. So long as they engage in critical self-examination, Claude will probably be good.”