AI giant Anthropics ties to cult-like Effective Altruism, Democrat megadonors on Trump admins radar | Latest Tech News
Anthropic has been combating to persuade the Trump administration it isn’t “woke” – but that might be an uphill battle thanks to the AI giant’s ties to the weird, cult-like “Effective Altruism” motion, The Post has realized.
Popular with Silicon Valley bigwigs, Effective Altruism urges devotees to funnel their money to causes they consider will most benefit humanity in the future. Dubbed “long-termism” by followers, those causes embody climate change, stopping pandemics — and a near-obsession with closely regulating artificial intelligence.
“They believe that only a handful of people can control access – that AI, if not in their hands, will be leveraged to destroy the world,” said Nathan Leamer, a former FCC coverage adviser and CEO of Fixed Gear Strategies.
“Truly, they have a fully ‘doomer’ apocalypse worldview,” Learner added. “Effective altruism is a governing philosophy that is entirely built on godless progressive ideas.”
Anthropic Co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei speaks at the “How AI Will Transform Business in the Next 18 Months” panel during INBOUND 2025 Powered by HubSpot at Moscone Center on September 04, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Getty Images for HubSpot
Critics word that EA’s campaign to save humanity hasn’t put a crimp on the extravagant existence of its adherents — among them Sam Bankman-Fried. The disgraced FTX kingpin recognized as “SBF” constructed a luxurious Bahamas seaside condominium with stolen buyer funds, offering workers free massages while he rubbed elbows with celebrities. Elsewhere, EA leaders have drawn flak over their style for non-public jets and medieval English manors.
Anthropic — the firm behind the Claude chatbot — is led by CEO Dario Amodei, a 42-year-old, Princeton-trained physicist who once called Trump a “feudal warlord” in a now-deleted social media post and who backed Kamala Harris to be president in 2024.
The San Francisco company has relied closely on money from left-wing EA leaders and Democratic megadonors like SBF since its founding – a fact that hasn’t escaped the discover of key figures in Trumpworld, sources close to the scenario told The Post.
The firm’s lefty ties are “certainly on the radar” of key choice makers and have hampered Anthropic’s capacity to gain traction with the administration — whether or not it’s pushing AI insurance policies or vying to win big federal contracts, a source close to the White House said.
“The government is not going to want to contract with companies that do not have the nation’s best interests at heart,” the source added.
The White House press workplace didn’t return a request for remark.
Anthropic’s cofounders embody siblings Dario Amodei (left), who is CEO, and president Daniela Amodei. ANTHROPC
While Amodei has seldom been noticed alongside other tech executives at White House occasions, he has just lately stepped up efforts to construct relations with Trump. The Anthropic boss jetted off to Tokyo in late October for a dinner with President Trump and other business leaders, another source close to the scenario said.
Anthropic officers have also been briefing White House officers in latest weeks about their plans to roll out a privately funded compute and power strategy to help AI development, the source added.
Meanwhile, an Anthropic spokesperson pushed back on the notion that the firm has a rift with the White House, asserting that the company is aligned with the Trump administration’s views on a quantity of insurance policies.
Amodei has said on a number of events that he doesn’t establish as half of the EA neighborhood, the spokesperson added.
“As Dario said in his statement, Anthropic is committed to constructive engagement on matters of public policy,” a company spokesperson said in a assertion. “We fully believe that Anthropic, the administration, and leaders across the political spectrum want the same thing: to ensure that powerful AI technology benefits the American people and that America advances and secures its lead in AI development.”
In September, Semafor reported that Anthropic irked White House officers by barring federal contractors from utilizing its instruments for some law enforcement functions, raising considerations that Anthropic might be “selectively enforcing its policies” over politics.
Anthropic pushed back, noting that a number of federal companies have been at the moment utilizing its fashions without issue. The firm’s insurance policies bar the use of its AI instruments for direct home surveillance and data assortment, which is in line with rivals like OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft.
“Anthropic is trying to smuggle ideology into federal rule-making under the banner of ‘safety’ and that is exactly what makes Trumpworld view them as hostile,” a former Trump administration official said. “It feels less like corporate engagement and more like political warfare.”
Dustin Moskovitz was a cofounder of Facebook. BLOOMBERG NEWS
SBF briefly grew to become Anthropic’s largest investor in April 2022 when he purchased a $500 million stake utilizing FTX buyer funds. Prosecutors later blasted the now-jailed crypto fraudster for attempting to float Effective Altruism as a justification for his misdeeds.
Anthropic’s earliest backers included billionaire Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who loved affect with the Biden White House while bankrolling Democratic causes and numerous AI security initiatives. Moskovitz has since transferred his stake in Anthropic into a nonprofit vehicle to keep away from the looks of conflicts of pursuits.
“The EAs and Anthropic were killing it during the Biden years. Any official that Biden brought in as an adviser, either official or unofficial, was from this effective altruist worldview,” said Leamer. “They were living large for the four years from 2021 to 2024, and it’s been a total game change for them.”
Moskovitz also launched Open Philanthropy, an EA-focused charity that in 2023 alone poured $15 million into Rand Corporation. The assume tank reportedly performed a key position in crafting President Biden’s government order imposing guardrails on AI – which was revoked by Trump on his first day in workplace.
“We believe that technology and scientific progress have drastically improved human well-being, which is why so much of our work focuses on these areas,” an Open Philanthropy spokesperson said. “AI has enormous potential to accelerate science, fuel economic growth, and expand human knowledge, but it also poses some unprecedented risks — a view shared by leaders across the political spectrum.”
“We support thoughtful nonpartisan work to help manage those risks and realize the huge potential upsides of AI,” the spokesperson added.
White House AI czar David Sacks has been one of Anthropic’s largest critics. Getty Images
Dario Amodei’s sister, Daniela, is married to Holden Karnofsky, who is widely credited as a chief of the EA motion. He served as CEO of Open Philanthropy before stepping down to take a position at Anthropic last yr.
Daniela Amodei tried to distance herself from the EA motion as just lately as March, when she told Wired that she was “not an expert on effective altruism” and called it a “bit of an outdated term.”
Meanwhile, Dario Amodei’s frequent warnings about potential AI doom, such as his declare of a 25% likelihood that issues go “really, really badly” for humanity, have put Anthropic at odds with Trump officers who argue that an overemphasis on AI security dangers stifling innovation.
Last month, Amodei – once blasted by White House AI czar David Sacks as an AI “doomer” and “committed leftist” – printed a weblog post that slammed “a recent uptick in inaccurate claims” about Anthropic’s politics, insisting the company was aligned with the Trump administration on “key areas of AI policy.”
Sacks has repeatedly called Dario Amodei an AI “doomer.” Getty Images
Amodei said in his weblog post that Anthropic has “publicly praised President Trump’s AI Action Plan” and just lately secured a $200 million contract with the US War Department.
“Our longstanding position is that managing the societal impacts of AI should be a matter of policy over politics,” Amodei wrote.
Outside of the EA motion, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, a deep-pocketed Democrat, sits on Anthropic’s board of administrators. Other big backers embody LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a major antagonist to the GOP.
Sacks ripped Anthropic’s affiliation with Hoffman while alleging on Oct. 14 that Anthropic wished to “backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California.”
Disgraced crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried was one of Anthropic’s early buyers. Getty Images for CARE For Specia
As The Post reported, Anthropic’s buyers also embody the Ford Foundation, a left-wing group just lately blasted by Vice President JD Vance for being half of what he called an “NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence” following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The Ford Foundation acquired the minor stake during FTX’s chapter proceedings.
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