Key Takeaways
- • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei once urged OpenAI to stop accepting money from Peter Thiel after Thiel committed $1.25 million to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, which Amodei called "morally worthy of condemnation," according to The New York Times.
- • Founders Fund, the venture firm Thiel co-founded, made its first direct investment in Anthropic in February, co-leading a $30 billion funding round that valued the company at $380 billion and reportedly putting in about $1.25 billion.
- • Founders Fund is also an OpenAI investor, giving Thiel-linked capital a stake in both rival AI labs.
- • Amodei's 2020 departure from OpenAI, which led to the founding of Anthropic, followed disputes over governance and the role of Greg Brockman, and Anthropic is now preparing a Nasdaq listing.
Summary
According to a New York Times report, Dario Amodei, then a few months into his role leading the safety team at OpenAI, posted on the company's internal messaging app that Peter Thiel's $1.25 million contribution to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign made him "morally worthy of condemnation." Days after Trump's November 2016 election win, Amodei also wrote that he feared the country was drifting toward authoritarianism and said he was uneasy conducting research on militarily powerful technology under such conditions. Thiel, a PayPal and Palantir co-founder who spoke at the Republican National Convention, was an outlier in Silicon Valley, where most tech political money went to Hillary Clinton. Thiel was also among the donors named when OpenAI was established as a nonprofit in December 2015, alongside Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and Amazon Web Services, pledging a combined $1 billion.
Sam Altman's ties to Thiel were deeper. Thiel was the largest outside investor in Hydrazine, the venture fund Altman founded in 2012, and Altman publicly defended Thiel's role at Y Combinator in October 2016. Amodei's position diverged from Altman's, though Amodei also helped bring funding to OpenAI in 2017 by connecting it with the philanthropy led by Holden Karnofsky, which later became Coefficient Giving and donated $30 million to OpenAI.
Tensions escalated after Daniela Amodei joined OpenAI in 2018, and in December 2018 Amodei reportedly confronted a colleague who had questioned his suitability for the chief ethics officer role. The rupture came over the GPT project, with Amodei reportedly warning Altman he would leave unless Greg Brockman was kept away from the work. In December 2020, the Amodeis and several colleagues left, and Anthropic was founded weeks later.
The political money question remains sensitive. Brockman and his wife gave $25 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in September 2025, according to federal filings reported by Bloomberg, and Amodei has reportedly called that donation "evil" in messages to colleagues, per The Wall Street Journal. Founders Fund's February investment in Anthropic means Thiel's firm now holds stakes in both companies as Anthropic prepares to list on Nasdaq.
Sam Altman's ties to Thiel were deeper. Thiel was the largest outside investor in Hydrazine, the venture fund Altman founded in 2012, and Altman publicly defended Thiel's role at Y Combinator in October 2016. Amodei's position diverged from Altman's, though Amodei also helped bring funding to OpenAI in 2017 by connecting it with the philanthropy led by Holden Karnofsky, which later became Coefficient Giving and donated $30 million to OpenAI.
Tensions escalated after Daniela Amodei joined OpenAI in 2018, and in December 2018 Amodei reportedly confronted a colleague who had questioned his suitability for the chief ethics officer role. The rupture came over the GPT project, with Amodei reportedly warning Altman he would leave unless Greg Brockman was kept away from the work. In December 2020, the Amodeis and several colleagues left, and Anthropic was founded weeks later.
The political money question remains sensitive. Brockman and his wife gave $25 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in September 2025, according to federal filings reported by Bloomberg, and Amodei has reportedly called that donation "evil" in messages to colleagues, per The Wall Street Journal. Founders Fund's February investment in Anthropic means Thiel's firm now holds stakes in both companies as Anthropic prepares to list on Nasdaq.
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