Anthropic CEO described Jensen Huang as 'kind of Trump-like' during 2022 meeting

According to an upcoming book, the first meeting between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in May 2022 was contentious. The book, titled "The AGI Chronicles," reveals that disagreements and slights marred the encounter at the upscale Chinese restaurant Eight Tables in San Francisco. The discussion centered on Anthropic's requirement for computational resources.

However, prior to the meeting, Anthropic's chief compute officer, Tom Brown, had attempted to negotiate a discount on GPUs, presenting Huang with a spreadsheet comparing the cost-effectiveness of Google's Tensor Processing Units to Nvidia's chips. This exchange reportedly escalated when Huang, angered by the comparison, referred to Brown as a "bean counter."

The subsequent dinner did not improve the atmosphere; Huang continued to repeat himself on the topic of building the world's largest data center, prompting Amodei to remark that Huang was acting in a manner reminiscent of former President Trump. Although no deal was finalized during the dinner, the companies later established a partnership.

Presently, Anthropic utilizes a combination of GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, Google's Tensor Processing Units, and is also engaged in co-designing its own custom inference chips. In recent times, Amodei has published an essay advocating for a measured approach to AI model development and dined with the actual Donald Trump. Huang has publicly opposed calls for pacing and regulation, instead advocating for self-policing by companies.

He has stated that companies releasing unsafe products should be shut down. The book "The AGI Chronicles" is set to release on October 6.