Cathie Wood Blames Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the AI Panic Her Fund Profits From

Cathie Wood has found a scapegoat for this year's AI doom coverage: the CEO of a company her own fund owns. On ARK Invest's monthly video Friday, Wood pinned the gloomy headlines on Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, whose warnings about mass job losses and a double-digit chance AI wipes out humanity have dominated the discourse. Her verdict: I can't understand why he's been saying it.

The timing is loaded. The Nasdaq fell 5.52% on November 5 after Democrats swept the midterms, with investors rattled by the prospect of limits on data centers. Voters backed restrictions in 39 of 45 data center ballot measures. Wood's counterpoint is the jobs data: the US added 165,000 jobs in October against 65,000 expected, and unemployment slid to 4.1%. Her call is a labor shortage, not a jobs wipeout.

She leaned on Ramp figures showing the top 1% of companies spend nearly $10,000 per worker a month on AI, while most businesses spend $15. Ramp's own data puts the top 1% at a record median of $7,400 per employee in July, the top 10% at $650, and the median business at $11.95. Wood reads that gap as proof the AI buildout is still in its opening act.

One detail worth flagging: the extinction number isn't really Amodei's. Axios attributed odds above 10% to Evan Hubinger, who leads Anthropic's AI safety team. Amodei's own estimate, given to Axios in 2025, was a 25% chance things go really, really badly. He did warn in May 2025 that AI could erase half of entry-level office jobs and push US unemployment into the 10% to 20% range within five years.

Wood does concede that electricity prices have climbed. The bigger risk sits with data centers: UBS estimates construction pauses could put roughly 30% of planned 2028 US capacity at risk. Goldman Sachs says states facing potential restrictions account for about 45% of planned US capacity, with Texas alone near 25%.

The sell-off has already washed into Asian markets. Wood points out that since 1958, US stocks have typically gained 13% to 14% in the year after a midterm, and Fundstrat's Tom Lee has told investors to buy the AI dip. For AI shareholders, the next real signal is whether those ballot wins turn into actual construction halts.