Investor and ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood has blamed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the wave of negative publications about artificial intelligence. A notable nuance: ARK Invest's venture arm directly invests in Anthropic.
On November 5, the Nasdaq index fell 5.52% after the Democrats' victory in the US midterm elections. Investors began to fear restrictions on data center construction — such bans were supported by residents in 39 of 45 local votes.
Why Cathie Wood criticized the head of Anthropic
In ARK Invest's monthly video address on Friday, Wood stated that Amodei's claims about mass layoffs and a 10% probability of human extinction in the coming decade are fueling the negative news backdrop.
"I don't understand why he says this," she noted.
Wood also cited Ramp data: the top 1% of companies spend nearly $10,000 per employee per month on AI, while most spend only $15. In her assessment, such a gap indicates that AI is only just gaining momentum.
Wood is convinced that the US will face a shortage of specialists, not mass unemployment. In October, according to her, the country added 165,000 new jobs against expectations of 65,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%.
A separate financial motive is obvious: through its venture product, ARK provides investors with access to Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, noting the "incredible success" of the first two companies.
Such growth requires data centers. According to UBS estimates, a pause in their construction could jeopardize about 30% of the data center capacity planned for 2028 in the US.
What Amodei warned about
In May 2025, Amodei stated that AI could eliminate half of the jobs for entry-level office workers and drive US unemployment to 10–20% within five years. At the same time, the estimate of the probability of human extinction above 10% is not attributed to the startup's head himself — such frightening figures were voiced by Evan Hubinger, who heads the AI safety department at Anthropic. Amodei himself in 2025 estimated the probability of events developing "very, very badly" at 25%.
Wood also acknowledged the rise in electricity prices. At the same time, she recalled: since 1958, US stocks have on average grown about 13–14% per year after midterm elections. Tom Lee of Fundstrat urged investors to buy the dip amid the AI correction — the sell-off has already affected Asian markets as well.
Cryptalist analysis: The conflict of interest here is obvious: ARK simultaneously criticizes Anthropic's rhetoric and profits from its valuation through a venture product, which reduces the weight of Wood's arguments as an objective analyst. Nevertheless, her thesis about a shortage of personnel rather than mass unemployment is confirmed by macrostatistics of the labor market. For the crypto market, the key signal is the risk of a halt in data center construction: it is this, and not statements by individual CEOs, that determines the sustainability of demand for computing power and AI-related token assets.