A conversation with Dario Amodei & Daniela Amodei

1. AVAmi Vora0:00

   [upbeat music] [audience cheering] All right. All right, everyone. Thank you for, um, for joining us again, and I am so excited for this conversation with Dario and Daniela. Let's give them a round. Whoo.

2. DADaniela Amodei2:03

   [clapping]

3. AVAmi Vora2:06

   It is a delight to have you here at Code with Claude. We've been having a great day of sessions, demos, uh, customer sessions, all sorts of fun stuff. But I wanted to ask you maybe just a little bit zooming out, we talked a lot about the exponential in some of our conversations this morning and, uh, what it feels like to be on the exponential. And so as two people [laughs] who are definitely on the exponential, um, we've talked a lot about growth and what it feels like. What does it feel like for you all?

4. DADaniela Amodei2:40

   Well, first of all, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having us. Um, you know, at Anthropic, we have this little Slack emoji of the rollercoaster. You guys know the one I'm talking about? Um, but it's like an inflected rollercoaster, so it's almost like it's like going straight up. And I think of me and Dario as riding at the front and the back-

5. AVAmi Vora3:03

   [laughs]

6. DADaniela Amodei3:04

   ... of that rollercoaster. I don't know if you all have ever, maybe not recently, been on a rollercoaster. I'm not always sure which one of us is in the front and which one of us is in the back, but you get w- a different type of whiplash depending on which side you're on. Um, and I think that's probably the best encapsulation of what it has felt like. It's like we're having a lot of fun. There's a ton of adrenaline. Um, we're not totally sure that the operator of the rollercoaster isn't like a 15-year-old [laughing] who's doing a summer job-

7. AVAmi Vora3:32

   Summer carnival ride

8. DADaniela Amodei3:32

   ... of like questionable level of sounds mind. Um, but it's been great. It's fun. It's an adventure. There's a lot going on.

9. DADario Amodei3:41

   Yeah, you know, the way I always think about the exponential is, you know, it was, it was me and the other co-founders who kinda, you know, first predicted it through the scaling laws, you know, over, over ten years ago. And, you know, we wrote down these lines on graphs that say like, "Well, first we're gonna spend $1,000 in AMA, and then 10,000, and then 100." You know, it's gonna go all the way to, to, to hundreds of billions, and, you know, the model's gonna be this good at this task, and this good at this other task, and that good at, at, at, at coding. And, and it, it, it is a remarkable experience to write down these lines on graphs and have the predictions come true. So in that sense, they are not surprising at all. And, and yet the actual experience of seeing what it's like-

10. AVAmi Vora4:22

    Mm

11. DADario Amodei4:22

    ... i- is, is, is just, it's, it's so crazy that you're shocked anyway, even though what you wrote down on the, on the graph is exactly what hap... I'm always reminded of like, you know, the, the-- there's this famous scene in the movie Interstellar where, where they go to this, you know, planet that's very close to a black hole. And, and so, you know, the planet has these waves that are like, you know, 2,000 feet high. And, and, you know, I, I was a physicist. I know, I know the math of general relativity, how much things can be, um, uh, uh, uh, sheared. But actually seeing it on human scale, like there's something deeply, you know, th- this kind of deeply strange and unsettling about seeing it actually happen. And, and, you know, that, that's what it felt like every year at Anthropic. And, and I feel like this is the first year where like the rest of the world is, is kind of, you know, is seeing us, seeing it with us-

12. AVAmi Vora5:12

    Mm-hmm

13. DADario Amodei5:12

    ... because we're so much in the spotlight. Um, you know, it applies to the internal growth of the company. It applies to our own work within the company. We're at the first time we've seen the number of internal PRs inflect upwards due to, due to the work that, that Claude is doing. And we've seen it externally because actually this is the first year we've grown faster than the exponential.

14. AVAmi Vora5:33

    Mm.

15. DADario Amodei5:34

    So, you know, w- we tried to plan very well for a world of 10X growth per year. Um, in the first quarter of this year, we sawIf you were to annualize it, 80x growth per year-

16. AVAmi Vora5:48

    Ooh

17. DADario Amodei5:48

    ... in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in revenue and usage. And, and, and so that, that, that is the reason we have had difficulties with compute, right? We've planned for anything from it only grows a little to it grows 10X, and yet we saw 80X. Um, and, and, and so, you know, as you saw today with the, the, the, the SpaceX compute deal, we're working as quickly as possible to provide more, more compute than, uh, than, than, than we have in the past. We'll continue to do so. We'll pass that compute on to you as, as, as, as, as soon as we can, as soon as we can do so. Um, I, I, I guess I hope the 80X growth doesn't continue-

18. AVAmi Vora6:26

    [laughs]

19. DADario Amodei6:26

    ... 'cause that's just crazy and it's too hard to, too hard to handle. I hope for some more normal, [laughs] more normal, uh, uh, more normal-

20. AVAmi Vora6:34

    AI normal

21. DADario Amodei6:34

    ... numbers. A mere, a mere, a mere 10X. Um, uh, but we will, we will manage it, uh, absolutely as, uh, we will manage it absolutely as, uh, best we can and, uh, you know, we're, we're every day trying to, uh, trying to obtain even more compute that, that we can, uh, we can, we can, we can pass on to you. We're sorry if sometimes it takes some time, but, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna keep going to acquire as much as we can.

22. AVAmi Vora7:00

    Awesome. Um. [clapping] Yes. Yay for compute rate limits. You know, this is an audience of developers and builders, and that's really what today is about, is about how we're making our platform better. Because developers are who help us close the gap between what the models can do and what they're actually doing for real people out there. And, you know, both of you talk a lot internally about the importance of developers and builders. Um, maybe Daniela, I'd love to start with you. Like, how do you think about supporting this ecosystem, supporting this community?

23. DADaniela Amodei7:38

    Yeah, I mean, I'll start out by saying I think in many ways, developers are the most important users of Claude, um, I think for a variety of reasons. You know, one is Anthropic ourselves are majority developers, right? If you think about, um, how we develop this technology, what we're building, we learn so much from the developer community. It's like the best, um, it's the best partnership-

24. AVAmi Vora8:06

    Mm

25. DADaniela Amodei8:06

    ... because we-- It's-- First of all, I think it's, it's a group that gives, like, honest feedback.

26. AVAmi Vora8:12

    [laughs]

27. DADaniela Amodei8:13

    Right? And so I think that, that is actually really hard to get.

28. AVAmi Vora8:17

    Yeah.

29. DADaniela Amodei8:17

    You know what I mean? It's like you build a product and you're like, "I see some numbers," like, "Those are nice." But like the genuineness with which the developer community, I think, engages with us is something that is so special.

30. AVAmi Vora8:28

    Mm.

Episode duration: 33:10