Dario Amodei's college prof graded his placement exam; Musk offered him a SpaceX job
sahilypatel · x · 2026-10-26
A collection of anecdotes about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's college years: his Caltech physics instructor mhartl realized he would have taught Amodei had he not skipped Physics 1 — and almost certainly graded his placement exam as head TA. Amodei was so impressive his professor called him a "national treasure" and personally pitched him to Elon Musk and Larry Page, with Musk actually offering him a SpaceX job. Steve Hsu also relays an SF insider's claim that the smartest AI researcher in the Western ecosystem is this scaling-famous theoretical physicist.
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