February 25, 2026 Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the company had an early version of Claude — Claude 1 — before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, but chose not to release it over safety concerns. He said the decision was “very commercially expensive,” but was aimed at avoiding an AI “arms race” that could pressure competitors to ship powerful models without adequate safeguards.
Amodei made the comments on investor Nikhil Kamath’s podcast WTF Is, where he also revisited why he left OpenAI and co-founded Anthropic. In his words: “So, back in 2022, we had an early version of Claude, Claude 1. This was before ChatGPT. And we chose not to release this because we were worried that it would kick off an arms race and not give us enough time to build these systems safely.”
He described the decision to hold Claude 1 as a “one-time overhang,” arguing the delay bought time before competition escalated. “And then we waited, someone else did, and then we were like, ‘Okay, the arms race has kicked off.’ So now we can release our model, but probably the world gained a few months,” he said.
Amodei added that the choice had a clear business cost, as Anthropic lost the lead on consumer AI because of that.
In a separate NDTV report on the same podcast, Amodei said he left OpenAI due to differences in “vision and approach” to AI development and a belief that it was better to pursue his own principles. “Eventually, a few other employees and I just kind of had our own revision for how we wanted to make AI and what we wanted the company to stand for. And so we went off and founded Anthropic,” he said.
According to the Anthropic CEO, he doubted OpenAI’s approach on responsible development of AI. Due to his belief that AI models becoming as capable as human brains could lead to huge effects on the economy and society in general, he said he wanted it to be done right. Another issue he mentioned was his vision of scaling AI models.
The comments come amid heightened attention on the relationship between Anthropic and OpenAI following a viral moment at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where Altman and Amodei, standing side by side, did not join hands during a group photograph while others did.
