Anthropic CEO

Imagine a future where a billion-dollar business is run by a single person: no massive teams, no fancy boardrooms, and no endless meetings. Just one individual and a very powerful AI assistant. According to Dario Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, that future might not be so far off. In fact, it could arrive as soon as 2026. Speaking at Anthropic’s recent “Code with Claude” developer conference in San Francisco, Amodei made a striking prediction: He says that it is very likely that we’ll see a single-person company reach a billion-dollar valuation in the next year or so, thanks to AI.

He was responding to a question from Anthropic’s chief product officer (who also co-founded Instagram) Mike Krieger. He asked whether such a scenario was even possible. Amodei did not hesitate: “Yes, I think it will happen.” The Anthropic CEO also softened his stance later as he said that there is a 70 to 80 per cent chance that his prediction will come true, but it is still a bold bet on where the world is headed.

So what kind of business could be run by just one person and scale to such heights?

Amodei pointed to industries that don’t depend heavily on people-driven processes. His top pick? Proprietary trading, where firms invest their own capital instead of managing client money. With AI capable of crunching data, spotting trends, and even making decisions faster than any human trader, a one-person hedge fund no longer seems like science fiction.

Another area ripe for solo disruption is developer tools. Think of a software engineer building products for other developers, using AI to write and maintain nearly all the code. With automation taking care of customer support, billing, and even marketing, the lone founder can focus entirely on building and improving the product.

“It’s not that crazy,” Krieger added. “I built a billion-dollar company with 13 people.” He was, of course, talking about Instagram, which was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. Back then, the main challenge was content moderation. Today, with AI, even that can be handled with minimal human input.

This isn’t the first time Amodei has made such forward-looking claims. Earlier this year, he said that by the end of 2025, AI will be responsible for writing nearly all software code, between 90 and 100 per cent of it. If that turns out to be true, the barrier to entry for starting a tech business could fall dramatically. Want to build an app or launch a SaaS company? You might not need a team of engineers any more. Just you and a powerful AI model.