Dario Amodei explains why he left OpenAI and teamed up with Elon Musk

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, told reporters that his 2021 departure from OpenAI was driven by a lack of trust in Sam Altman, and that his current partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI reflects a shared belief that Altman’s growing power poses the biggest risk to Anthropic’s ambitions【1】.

Why the split matters

Amodei’s public criticism of Altman dates back to 2021, when he said the core problem at OpenAI was Sam Altman himself【1】. The comment underscores a long‑standing governance rift that later manifested in Anthropic’s decision to secure external compute through Musk’s xAI rather than rely on traditional cloud providers. The partnership gives Anthropic access to the “Colossus” data centre—an Nvidia‑GPU‑heavy facility built to meet the token‑intensive demands of models like Claude Code—while allowing xAI to reserve the larger “Colossus 2” for its own scaling plans【1】. For Musk, the deal supplies a ready‑made workload for his hardware investments; for Amodei, it offers a compute lifeline without deepening ties to a competitor he distrusts.

Competitive context

OpenAI still dominates user numbers via ChatGPT and maintains a strong coding product in Codex, keeping it the primary barrier to Anthropic’s market share growth【1】. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s strategic compute constraints remain “thin and potentially fleeting,” prompting Amodei to view Musk’s resources as a more credible short‑term ally than Altman’s expanding infrastructure【1】. The collaboration also reflects a broader pattern in AI leadership: CEOs who publicly warn of existential AI risks—both Altman and Amodei—are now aligning to limit each other’s influence, rather than cooperating on safety initiatives.

Broader AI‑job outlook

Amodei’s earlier warning that AI could wipe out half of entry‑level white‑collar positions within five years, pushing unemployment to 10‑20%, has not materialised as a mass layoff wave. Labor data through early 2026 shows only a modest 13% relative decline for workers aged 22‑25 in the most AI‑exposed jobs, while older, experienced staff remain stable【2】. The gap between Amodei’s alarmist forecast and current employment trends highlights the difficulty of translating technical risk assessments into concrete market predictions.

What to watch

• Colossus rollout – monitor when Anthropic begins using the Colossus facility for inference workloads.
• xAI’s compute expansion – watch for announcements on the operational status of Colossus 2 and any new hardware deployments.
• OpenAI’s response – track OpenAI’s next major infrastructure investment or partnership that could counter Anthropic’s xAI tie‑up.

Amodei’s departure and his current alliance with Musk illustrate how personal trust issues can reshape AI competition, raising the question of whether strategic compute deals will become the primary lever for challengers to OpenAI’s dominance.