Sam McCandlish

From 2008 to 2012 his academic affiliation was Brandeis University.⁠[1]

He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics and a master’s degree in physics there.⁠[2]

From 2012 he was affiliated with the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.⁠[1]

During this period he published theoretical physics papers including “Controlled non-Fermi liquids from spacetime dependent couplings” (2014, with Eva Silverstein and others), “Integral Geometry and Holography” (2015) and “Tensor Networks from Kinematic Space” (2015).⁠[3]

On May 16, 2017, Stanford’s physics department held the defense of his Ph.D. dissertation, “Depth Perception in Holography,” supervised by Eva Silverstein.⁠[4]

He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2017; his full name is Samuel Russel McCandlish.⁠[5]

On the December 2017 preprint “Modular Berry Connection,” his affiliation was listed as Boston University.⁠[3]

He held a postdoctoral position there.⁠[2]

He spent three years as a member of technical staff at OpenAI.⁠[6]

In December 2018 he was first author of “An Empirical Model of Large-Batch Training,” written with Jared KaplanJared KaplanJared Kaplan is an American theoretical physicist who co-founded the artificial intelligence company Anthropic and serves as its Chief Science Officer; he is also an associate professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University. He was the first author of the scaling-laws paper on neural language models and worked on research including GPT-3 and Constitutional AI.Open the full entry, Dario AmodeiDario AmodeiDario Amodei is an artificial intelligence researcher and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic. Trained in physics and biophysics, he conducted research at Baidu, Google Brain, and OpenAI, where he led research including work on GPT-2 and GPT-3. His career spans large-model development, AI safety, interpretability, and public policy.Open the full entry and the OpenAI Dota Team.⁠[7]

In January 2020 he was second author, after Jared Kaplan, of “Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models.”⁠[8]

He co-authored the GPT-3 paper.⁠[9]

In 2021 he co-founded Anthropic with six other former OpenAI employees.⁠[6]

In October 2024 Anthropic named Jared Kaplan its Responsible Scaling Officer, succeeding McCandlish, who had held the role for the prior year, overseen the initial implementation of its Responsible Scaling Policy and remained chief technology officer.⁠[10]

In January 2025 ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry estimated that each of Anthropic’s seven co-founders would retain more than 2 percent of the company after a new funding round, making each worth at least $1.2 billion.⁠[11]

In October 2025 Anthropic hired Rahul Patil to replace him as chief technology officer, and he moved to a new role as chief architect, working on pre-training and large-scale model training; both report to president Daniela AmodeiDaniela AmodeiDaniela Amodei is an American executive who co-founded the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, where she serves as president and chairs the board. After early work in international development and politics, she held roles at Stripe and OpenAI before co-founding Anthropic in 2021 with her brother Dario Amodei and others.Open the full entry.⁠[12]

In January 2026 a pledge by him and his six fellow co-founders to give away 80 percent of their wealth was made public.⁠[13]

In October 2026 he made the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans with an estimated net worth of $15.5 billion at age 36, alongside three other Anthropic co-founders.⁠[14]

He was also among the 10 youngest billionaires on the list.⁠[15]

Anthropic filed its S-1 on October 26, 2026; he is one of seven initial members of the Founder LLC, which holds 50.1 percent of voting power.⁠[16]

The seven, including him, will decide how the Class F share is voted; co-founder Ben MannBen MannBen Mann (Benjamin Mann) is a co-founder of the AI company Anthropic. He previously worked at OpenAI on infrastructure, efficiency, and safety for GPT-3 and is one of the authors of the GPT-3 paper; as of 2026 he works on Anthropic’s Labs team, which incubates experimental products.Open the full entry is not among them.⁠[17]

The prospectus lists him with 231,809,780 shares, which Fortune valued at about $13.7 billion at the Series H price of $58.90 per share. All seven co-founders are listed as selling stockholders with the number of shares to be sold left blank and are subject to a 180-day lockup; the filing calls their giving pledges voluntary and revocable, not legally binding.⁠[18]

As of October 28, 2026, Forbes estimated his net worth at $13.1 billion.⁠[6]