Managing a company valued at nearly one trillion, but Anthropic's CEO only has one direct subordinate

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Has Only One Direct Report

Bloomberg · June 10, 2026

Key Highlights

· Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei has only one direct subordinate, Chief of Staff Avital Balwit, which is extremely rare in the tech industry.

· The company's executive team reports to President Daniela Amodei, who handles daily operations and is accountable to the board, allowing Dario to focus on strategic thinking and research directions.

· Dario spends a significant amount of time discussing Anthropic's culture with employees. Maintaining company culture is his and Daniela's top priority during rapid growth.

Despite Dario Amodei's enormous influence at Anthropic PBC, this co-founder and CEO has only one direct subordinate.

This is uncommon in the tech industry. Many current tech leaders are reducing management layers and expanding their span of control. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has about six direct reports, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reports to 60 people directly.

Anthropic is experimenting with a different leadership model: the CEO dedicates almost all of their time to strategic thinking, organizational culture, and input on research and strategy, rather than managing senior leadership. The company's executive team reports instead to Dario’s sister, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, who oversees most daily operations and reports to the board. Dario’s only direct manager is his Chief of Staff, Avital Balwit.

"This is incredibly freeing," Dario said in an interview with Emily Chang on Bloomberg’s "The Circuit." "It makes it much easier for me to do everything I’m supposed to do."

For Dario, as a first-time founder and a Princeton-trained biophysicist who spent early career years conducting research in labs, this often means spending a lot of time thinking about AI and its implications for humanity. He engages in these reflections through company-wide "Vision Quests" (employee gatherings where he discusses broad topics) and long-form public articles.

"In many ways, this is a question of focus and perspective. If you have a huge pile of things to handle tomorrow, it’s very hard to focus on the big picture," he said. "So separating these two things often makes a lot of sense, allowing both to be done well."

Before co-founding Anthropic, Dario was Vice President of Research at OpenAI. He left due to disagreements with the leadership there and co-founded Anthropic in 2021. Prior to that, he was a senior research scientist at Google.

Daniela has more extensive experience in HR management within tech startups. She was an early employee at Stripe and led safety and policy teams at OpenAI.

In its latest funding round, Anthropic was valued close to $1 trillion, and it is currently racing to go public before OpenAI.

In 2024, the company hired experienced tech executives, including CFO Krishna Rao, and in 2025, Chief Business Officer Paul Smith, to support rapid expansion. They work alongside all seven co-founders of Anthropic, with the Amodei siblings viewing the retention of all founders as a symbol of company cohesion and culture.

Dario estimates that "about half" of his time is spent discussing "Anthropic’s culture and how it operates," and he says maintaining company culture may be their "number one priority."

"When you grow so fast, you recruit a large number of people from big tech companies. If you don’t tell them how Anthropic operates, they will naturally replicate what they only know—the way their previous company worked," he explained.

Harvard Business School economist and management professor Raffaella Sadun believes that the extent of a CEO’s direct reports, beyond personal preference or leadership style, reflects the nature of organizational work. She describes the company as a problem-solving machine: frontline employees handle routine issues, while more difficult or exceptional problems move up the hierarchy.

This means that when other leaders in the organization are experienced experts capable of handling their responsibilities independently, the CEO can have a broader span of control. But when the company faces continuous new challenges and high-risk decisions requiring more top-level judgment (as with Anthropic), a narrower management scope may be necessary.

In any case, organizational structure must be carefully considered. "A manager’s time is the most scarce resource," Sadun said. Ideally, the design of a company’s structure aims to protect this scarce resource.