Anthropic’s Dario Amodei is steering a possible $2 trillion IPO—but he says up to 40% of his time goes to making sure company culture is good

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the most important thing he does each day has nothing to do with training AI models or shipping products.

Instead, he spends almost half his time working on company culture, he said.

“I probably spend a third, maybe 40%, of my time making sure the culture of Anthropic is good,” Amodei said in an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast in February.

Amodei’s comments offer a rare window into how one of tech’s most closely watched CEOs manages a company that now sports 3,500 employees and is set to go public as early as next month in an IPO that could reach $2 trillion —potentially surpassing SpaceX’s recent $1.77 trillion public debut to become the most valuable of all time.

Ahead of its potential public listing, the company told investors this week that its third quarter revenue had jumped 50% to $16.8 billion and that the company was profitable on an adjusted basis, the Financial Times reported .

As Anthropic has expanded and its revenue has skyrocketed, it has become nearly impossible for Amodei to weigh in on every technical and product decision, he said.

So rather than dig into the finer details, he has tried to focus on the bigger picture: making sure his employees like working for Anthropic; that the company’s mission and values are clear; and that all workers are working toward the same mission instead of against one another, as he said happens at other unnamed AI companies.

“I think we’ve done an extraordinarily good job, even if not perfect, of holding the company together, making everyone feel the mission, that we’re sincere about the mission, and that everyone has faith that everyone else there is working for the right reason,” he said.

Key to Amodei’s approach to culture is constant communication and extreme sincerity.

Amodei said he speaks candidly about his vision for the company in a biweekly all-hands he called a “DVQ,” short for Dario Vision Quest—a name he tried to resist at first because of its potential psychedelic connotation, but later accepted.

During these meetings, Amodei stands in front of the entire company with a three- or four-page document and speaks for an hour on topics ranging from product strategy to geopolitics , as well as the broader AI industry.

A large fraction of the company attends, either in person or virtually, he said.

Amodei says he speaks plainly with his employees, answering questions and avoiding what he calls “corpo speak.” He also has an active Slack channel where he writes responses to employee questions or his own thoughts about the company throughout the week.

Amodei’s blunt approach to communication echoes the “radical transparency” leadership style pioneered by Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio.