A CEO's Unusual Plan for Free Time

Dario Amodei sat down for an interview recently. He spoke with Emily Chang from Bloomberg. He told her about his special work structure. Dario is a boss at an AI company. The company is Anthropic. It started just over five years ago. Now, private investors say it is worth a trillion dollars. This means the company will grow very fast. In the interview, Dario revealed a surprising fact. He managed only one direct worker. This worker was his chief of staff. All other leaders reported to someone else. They reported to Daniela Amodei. Daniela is Dario’s sister. She also helped start the company. She was the president of Anthropic. She handled all the daily operations. Usually, managing a big team consumes all your time. People know that the people side takes everything. Dario did not want this big problem. His sister took the big executive team. This special arrangement gave Dario a lot of freedom. He said, "It's incredibly freeing." He will have time for important work now. He will focus almost entirely on strategy. He will think about the company culture. He will look at the research direction. He will also write sweeping essays. He will write about the future of civilization. These essays will even have footnotes. This structure was highly unusual for a big company. Other business leaders will feel seriously envious. OpenAI is another AI company. Sam Altman was the leader there. He had about six direct reports. This number was much more standard. Jensen Huang was the leader at Nvidia. He was an extreme outlier. He had many dozens of direct reports. Dario only had one. This made Dario very different. His plan worked well for him. Anthropic will continue to grow fast. Dario and Daniela will lead it together.