In a segment on NBC News Monday night, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern about “some of the things we’ve seen over the last few days,” citing violence by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
In both his NBC and X posts, Amodei focused on the importance of defending democracy at home, specifically calling out “the horrors we are seeing in Minnesota.” “We need to defend our democratic values at home,” he said on NBC, saying he believes in arming democracies to protect them from dictatorships. He added that Anthropic does not have a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Meanwhile, in an internal Slack message to OpenAI employees leaked to the New York Times, Sam Altman said, “What’s happening at ICE is going too far.”
“Part of loving our country is America’s obligation to push back against excesses,” Altman wrote. “There’s a big difference between deporting violent criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get the distinction right.”
Tech workers, including employees of both companies, called the White House to demand that ICE be withdrawn from U.S. cities after Border Patrol agents killed two Americans in Minneapolis. In an open letter, tech workers called on their CEOs to terminate all corporate contracts with ICE and publicly speak out against ICE violence.
Employees who call on CEOs to take action are emboldened and want more to join their ranks.
“We are happy to hear the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic condemning ICE murders,” ICEout.tech organizers, whose identities are unknown, told TechCrunch. “Now we need to hear from the CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta, who have remained silent despite calls to the entire industry.”
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Amodei and Altman may have held positions, one publicly and the other internally, but both CEOs issued similar statements praising President Trump.
Amodei praised President Trump’s move to allow Minnesota authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting by federal agents after multiple videos of Alex Preti’s death surfaced online. (It remains to be seen whether that investigation will take place, but a growing number of Republicans are also calling for one.)
In a message to staff, Altman said he was encouraged by Trump’s recent actions and hoped the president, a “very strong leader,” would “rise to this moment and unite the country.”
Altman assured them that OpenAI will “actually do the right thing as best we can, and try to find ways to engage with our leaders, promote our values, and speak out about it clearly when necessary.” Mr. Altman has not yet publicly criticized the administration’s immigration policies or how it deploys Border Patrol agents in American cities.
JJ Colao, founder of PR firm Haymaker Group and one of the signatories of ICEout.tech’s letter, accused Altman of calling Trump a strong leader and trying to “play it both ways,” “as if the president is not responsible for ICE’s actions.” He added: “I think what he’s saying online is helpful, but the performative compliments of the president really undermine that.”
Of course, the Trump administration’s current pro-AI policies have helped fuel the explosive growth of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic over the past year, with OpenAI raising at least $40 billion and in talks to raise another $100 billion at an $830 billion valuation, and Anthropic raising $19 billion and in talks to raise another $25 billion at a $350 billion valuation.
Still, such praise for Mr. Trump is a turnoff for Mr. Altman. In the run-up to President Trump’s first term in office in 2016, Altman posted the following on his blog:
“[Trump]is not just irresponsible; he is as irresponsible as any dictator could be…For anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s, watching Trump’s actions is appalling.”
At the time, he called Trump a “demagogic hate monger” who was trying to peddle the lie that “protecting us from foreigners makes America great” to distract from the fact that “there is no real plan to restore economic growth.” Altman acknowledged that he took some risks by writing his post, and ended with a quote attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
“Now would be a good time for all of us, especially Republicans, especially Republican politicians who previously supported Mr. Trump, to start speaking out,” he wrote.
And Amodei also appears to be even more passionate about his opposition to President Trump allowing Nvidia to sell AI chips to China, calling the decision “crazy” at last week’s World Economic Forum and likening it to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and[bragging]that Boeing made the casing for it.”
It remains to be seen whether these CEOs are doing everything some of their employees want them to do. Still, given what’s at stake for the company, even mild internal criticism is noteworthy.
TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic and OpenAI for comment.
This story has been updated with comment from JJ Colao.
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