C-Suite Signals: Dario Amodei, Anthropic.

In this episode of C-Suite Signals, Jordan and Tom discuss Dario Amodei’s recent media coverage, how he’s positioning Anthropic in the global AI race, his political signalling, and whether his communications strategy is landing with key audiences — from governments and investors to the wider public.

Each episode explores the career paths, communication styles, and public actions of today’s most influential leaders, offering listeners a front-row seat to leadership in action.

Dario Amodei.

Dario Amodei is the CEO and Co-Founder of Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies. Previously a senior research scientist at OpenAI, he founded Anthropic in 2021 with a focus on AI alignment and safety.

Under his leadership, Anthropic has become a key voice in the global AI policy debate — frequently weighing in on national security, AI regulation, and the economic impact of automation. His recent announcements, including a proposed $50 billion investment in US data centres, have positioned him not only as a technologist but as an influential geopolitical actor.

Transcript.

Jordan (J): Welcome to C Suite Signals, the podcast where we break down how today’s top CEOs are showing up in public. I am Jordan Greenaway, CEO at Profile, and on each episode I am joined by a colleague from the team to unpack the leadership signals that matter.

In ten minutes or less, we assess one high profile CEO’s public presence and ask whether they are building trust, showing leadership and cutting through the noise.

So let’s get into it.

Jordan (J): Today we are talking about Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who sits at the centre of the global AI conversation.

Amodei has been everywhere recently, unveiling a $50 billion plan to build US data centres, pushing for national AI standards, addressing claims about Anthropic’s politics, warning that AI could replace up to half of entry level white collar jobs, and reinforcing the company’s stance on safety, capability and national security.

There is a lot to discuss.

So how is he shaping his public profile, and is the message landing with the audiences that matter?

Tom, there has been a huge amount of coverage. Let’s focus on the most recent announcement, because we are recording in the week he began discussing the fifty billion dollar investment.

Talk me through the story, give me a rough overview, and feel free to touch on some of the other recent coverage too.

Tom (T): So, I mean, Anthropic has been more quiet than OpenAI, for example, on the investment.

They've kind of joined the party now. I think it's a good announcement.

He's been talking a lot recently about AI's job losses. Lots and lots of warnings basically all over the place saying that.

And now he's come out with a big announcement and he's put the focus actually on the jobs it's creating, which is quite a nice way to show, look, we are a slightly more responsible AI company.

We're creating jobs in the process, while warning that they might get lost somewhere.

But I think that's quite a nice message for them.

J: Very interesting, Tom.

And I've been thinking about his profile and stories actually in preparation for this podcast.

And I've got a bit of a headline reflection because his profile is very different to other CEOs, or I perceive it to be very different to other CEOs.

Let me explain that.

If you look at the profile of the other kind of AI company leaders and AI companies in general, lots of their Google News is dominated by new product launches, new rounds of investment, new features, what they're looking to do with the AI.

When you look at Dario's profile, there's not much of that.

It's very politics heavy. It doesn't lead necessarily so much on the business as on the role that Anthropic can and potentially will play in this kind of geopolitical battle zone.

I think that's interesting.

And when I was reading through this latest announcement, about 50 billion.

50 billion, big number. And I do think there is a little bit of a tactical play to say, oh, how can we get this number as high as possible?

Because everyone's pushing out such huge numbers that we need to beat them to get a headline.

I think there's a little bit of that at play, and I'd be interested to see if it actually leads to 50 billion.

But there was one line that I thought was particularly interesting, and this was not in the coverage, but in the blog post about the announcement on the Anthropic website.

And they said this is how this announcement supports Trump's AI agenda.

Isn't that interesting? In a funding announcement, they're talking about how it aligns with national policy.

I don't think that's an accident.

So while lots of other AI companies are talking about how they're delivering different products to consumers, I think they've made a strategic decision to, rather than go after the consumer audience, position themselves quite actively as a partner for big, big government spending.

And with that in mind, do you, Tom, think that's authentic?

Do you think that's his true view, or do you think there's a little bit of political strategic jockeying here?

And actually they're being a lot more kind of thoughtful, considered and strategic about it than just advancing his, or their as a company, real view.

What's your view?

T: I think there's a lack of authenticity somewhere, whether it falls on, you know, supporting Trump and the national agenda, or whether it falls on their kind of stance on some societal issues, which they kind of fall a bit further left, some might say the woke end, I don't know where.

I assume it's former.

I think he's being a bit inauthentic about his love and admiration for Trump's project just because it's good business.

Frankly, I do think he is authentic about the message he likes to talk about, about Western or democratic governments needing to build and share advanced AI systems for military capabilities to defend themselves.

And I think he is authentic about that. And I think that keeps Trump happy and on side, to an extent anyway.

But I don't think he's authentic in liking Trump's mission, but I think he kind of goes along with it and there is some truth behind that.

So I think it does work.

J: And when he writes that type of stuff or when he makes more general intervention, do you think that's an audience of one that he's talking to?

Do you think that's an audience of Trump and the government, or are there other audiences here that you think are equally interested in this message and how do you think this message plays to them?

Not only the $50 billion announcement, but the other stuff he said about, you know, cutting white collar jobs, etc.

Do you think he's speaking too much to the government stakeholder audience, or do you think actually this message plays quite well more generally?

T: I think it plays well with investors as well.

I mean, there's lots of tech CEOs at the moment trying to talk about defence security because so much new investment is going into it.

Everyone's hyped up about it.

So I think it's good to be kind of attracting that kind of, I guess, media attention.

Just purely from an investment perspective, I think he's doing well there.

I think he's maybe doing less well on the consumer side.

I think there's some, use the same word again, contradictions there.

Talks a lot about safety, responsibility. There's not much there for the consumer in terms of that he's being responsible in terms of protecting the country in which his company exists.

There's not much protection there for consumers, at least from what I can see.

Maybe there's some hidden there in the corporate comms that I'm not seeing.

But he's talking a lot about responsible AI, but he doesn't really back it up with how he's making AI more responsible for the public.

Again, talks about job losses. He's created some here, but ultimately his company is responsible for those job losses he's predicting.

He's not really telling the public how he's going to solve that.

So I think he's lacking some focus on the consumer, but I think he's doing well on the investor, the public sector side.

J: Interesting.

So I came into this podcast with a view that his comms had been a little bit too narrow, that he'd focused too much on geopolitics.

And actually the way that you've articulated there, it's quite nice, and not enough on the consumer because ultimately, AI, of course, is selling to businesses, but, you know, the ultimate uptake will be at the consumer side and Sam Altman's gone very hard into consumer awareness, etc.

Ask the average person on the street what Anthropic is. I don't know what the proportion of the public might know them.

I think it's probably less than you might expect.

I know you're going to come back on me on that and I'll leave that in the air for the moment.

But just to complete a thought, I thought that actually his communication had been too narrow, that he'd gone all in on this geopolitics side and he wasn't speaking sufficiently to other audiences.

But there's a flip side to this.

We know that the executive comms space in AI is flooded.

Everyone has an AI opinion, everyone has a view on how AI is going to change the world, that we're all going to be looked after by care bots in the future and all these various different things.

Our food's going to be made by a little AI Pan.

But there's so much media noise about AI and there's so much competition for executives to get their views across.

Maybe, actually, he's been quite clever.

Maybe he said, I can't own the AI space, despite how many billions we've raised, despite how big and well known a company we are in tech more generally.

We have to sharpen our pencil about what we can get known by, and maybe that is national security and being aligned with Western governments.

So actually, as I've heard you think you've changed my view.

I've got to the point now where I think if you're in a war for talent in Silicon Valley, you know, we know that they're paying megabucks for these engineers.

How do you compete?

You know, you can go ChatGPT and brand awareness, but actually, maybe their differentiated offering is we're doing something in this battle for the West, and that's their kind of sales point and point of difference.

And rather than spread ourselves too thin, we can own that.

But I know I invited a right, smile and maybe a scowl when I said that Anthropic wasn't as well known.

I don't know if you've got views on that.

T: No, no, I don't disagree with that.

I just think actually, they probably have a better perception amongst the public than OpenAI, potentially.

I think OpenAI may be too loud.

And then when hiccups happen, inevitably happen, people see Sam Altman a lot.

When things go wrong, they know who to blame it on.

I think Anthropic's maybe being a bit smart there and just being a bit quieter while this tech is still developing and while there are still a lot of questions, the regulations are still forming.

Maybe being a bit quieter now isn't a bad thing on the kind of the public level side of things.

J: Let's say that you were sitting next to Dario, advising him and he says he buys into that argument.

I worry that we're making ourselves a target. We're putting a target on our back.

What about if he said maybe we should be completely silent?

What would you say to that? Is it possible to be completely silent?

Because you seem to suggest that there's an upside to it. Is there a balance to be struck there?

Just talk me through your thinking on that.

T: No, no. I think he does need a presence.

I think it just needs to be, it doesn't need to be all over the place.

It doesn't need to be every day.

They've shown they can grow a fantastic, fast growing business without being everywhere all the time.

A bit like maybe Sam Altman.

I would just say, to be consistent, the more consumery messaging, public messaging, is about safety, responsibility.

Maybe there's some stuff in the corporate comms about how they're doing that.

But I think if he's the one talking about that, he needs to back it up.

Because if you see that and it looks a bit empty and then something does go wrong, things do go wrong, that's fine, then it starts to look like you're making empty promises.

I think he just needs to back things up when he does speak about these things.

J: I think that's interesting, which brings me to my last question. The final question I had here was if you were advising him, what would you suggest he do next?

T: One of the first things I did actually was look up his LinkedIn.

When I look up a CEO, always love to go and get basically their very authentic self, what they're typing down.

And I think he's got 40,000 followers, 45,000 people have followed him there looking for something from him, and not a single post, unless he deleted them at some point. I might miss that.

But yeah, he's got a massive audience there who have gone there looking for him. He should be posting for them.

J: There was something that struck me as being particularly true when you were speaking there, which is he's targeting a very sophisticated business, investor, talent, and government audience.

Best example of this, LinkedIn.

He has not posted on LinkedIn, I think, ever.

I was looking at his profile in advance of this, looking at his digital footprint and trying to understand what his strategy was.

Now, it may be that he's done that strategically because he views the media as a more credible channel.

But here's the problem.

If you don't build up your own owned channels and you're only depending on third party editorial channels to get your message across, that's all well and good when the media is on your side and things are going well, but actually having your own owned, controlled channel is a great vehicle to manage messaging, when things are going less well, and they might not have gone less well so far, he hasn't needed it. That's fine.

But I would advise him now to start building that own channel.

It could be LinkedIn, it could be writing more actively for the Anthropic website, it could be leaning more into owned multimedia content.

He hasn't needed it so far, I think, and I think he's done very well without it.

But I think he's missing a trick here and when he needs it will be too late.

So that's what I would say.

J: And that is about it for this episode of C Suite Signals, where leadership meets visibility.

And if you're a CEO, of course, ready to lead from the front or you're interested in getting some advice for your wider leadership team, please get in contact with us at Profile.

But until next time, stay visible.