Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei explains his spending caution, warning if AI growth forecasts are off by just a year, ‘then you go bankrupt’

While AI hyperscalers are committing hundreds of billions of dollar per year on capital expenditures, Anthropic’s spending plans are more cautious by comparison.

But cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei said the reason for his more measured approach is because even a slight miscalculation could sink the company.

In an interview with Dwarkesh Patel on Friday, the podcaster asked why Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, doesn’t spend more aggressively, given Amodei’s earlier prediction that an AI data center could one day be a “country of geniuses.”

Amodei replied that while he is confident the technical milestone is achievable soon, he’s less certain about the timing of the economic returns.

“I really do believe that we could have models that are a country of geniuses in the data center in one to two years,” he added. “One question is: How many years after that do the trillions in revenue start rolling in? I don’t think it’s guaranteed that it’s going to be immediate. It think it could be one year. It could be two years. I could even stretch it to five ye...