Former OpenAI researchers found AI safety company Anthropic in 2021

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of researchers and executives who had left OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. The team was led by Dario Amodei, previously OpenAI's vice president of research, and his sister Daniela Amodei. Other co-founders included Sam McCandlish, Jared Kaplan, Jack Clark, Tom Brown, Chris Olah and Ben Mann.

The company described itself as focused on AI safety research and on building systems that are reliable and easier to understand and steer. It was set up as a public benefit corporation, a US legal form that lets a firm weigh social goals alongside profit. Its first major funding round was announced in 2021, and it began work on large language models, the technology behind modern chatbots.

The founding mattered because it created a new frontier AI lab, formed partly from disagreements over how fast to develop powerful models and how to manage their risks. Anthropic later released its Claude assistant and became one of the leading competitors in the field, which is why outside groups now track how quickly its systems are improving.