AI giant Anthropic’s ties to cult-like Effective Altruism, Democrat megadonors on Trump admin’s ‘radar’

Anthropic has been fighting to convince the Trump administration it isn’t “woke” – but that could be an uphill battle thanks to the AI giant’s ties to the bizarre, cult-like “Effective Altruism” movement, The Post has learned.

Popular with Silicon Valley bigwigs, Effective Altruism urges devotees to funnel their cash to causes they believe will most benefit humanity in the future. Dubbed “long-termism” by followers, those causes include climate change, preventing pandemics — and a near-obsession with heavily 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 policy 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.”

Critics note that EA’s crusade to save humanity hasn’t put a crimp on the extravagant lifestyles of its adherents — among them Sam Bankman-Fried. The disgraced FTX kingpin known as “SBF” built a luxury Bahamas beach condo with stolen customer funds, offering staff free massages while he rubbed elbows with celebrities. Elsewhere, EA leaders have drawn flak over their taste for private 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 heavily on cash from left-wing EA leaders and Democratic megadonors like SBF since its founding – a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of key figures in Trumpworld, sources close to the situation told The Post.

The firm’s lefty ties are “certainly on the radar” of key decision makers and have hampered Anthropic’s ability to gain traction with the administration — whether it’s pushing AI 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 office didn’t return a request for comment.

While Amodei has seldom been spotted alongside other tech executives at White House events, he has recently stepped up efforts to build 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 situation said.

Anthropic officials have also been briefing White House officials in recent weeks about their plans to roll out a privately funded compute and energy strategy to support 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 number of policies.

Amodei has said on several occasions that he doesn’t identify as part of the EA community, 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 statement. “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 officials by barring federal contractors from using its tools for some law enforcement purposes, raising concerns that Anthropic could be “selectively enforcing its policies” over politics.

Anthropic pushed back, noting that multiple federal agencies were currently using its models without issue. The firm’s policies bar the use of its AI tools for direct domestic surveillance and data collection, 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.”

SBF briefly became Anthropic’s biggest investor in April 2022 when he bought a $500 million stake using FTX customer funds. Prosecutors later blasted the now-jailed crypto fraudster for trying to float Effective Altruism as a justification for his misdeeds.

Anthropic’s earliest backers included billionaire Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who enjoyed influence with the Biden White House while bankrolling Democratic causes and various AI safety initiatives. Moskovitz has since transferred his stake in Anthropic into a nonprofit vehicle to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests.

“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 think tank reportedly played a key role in crafting President Biden’s executive order imposing guardrails on AI – which was revoked by Trump on his first day in office.

“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.

Dario Amodei’s sister, Daniela, is married to Holden Karnofsky, who is widely credited as a leader of the EA movement. He served as CEO of Open Philanthropy before stepping down to take a role at Anthropic last year.

Daniela Amodei tried to distance herself from the EA movement as recently 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 claim of a 25% chance that things go “really, really badly” for humanity, have put Anthropic at odds with Trump officials who argue that an overemphasis on AI safety risks stifling innovation.

Last month, Amodei – once blasted by White House AI czar David Sacks as an AI “doomer” and “committed leftist” – published a blog 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.”

Amodei said in his blog post that Anthropic has “publicly praised President Trump’s AI Action Plan” and recently 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 movement, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, a deep-pocketed Democrat, sits on Anthropic’s board of directors. Other big backers include LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, a major antagonist to the GOP.

Sacks ripped Anthropic’s association with Hoffman while alleging on Oct. 14 that Anthropic wanted to “backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California.”

As The Post reported, Anthropic’s investors also include the Ford Foundation, a left-wing group recently blasted by Vice President JD Vance for being part 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 bankruptcy proceedings.