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WIRED Profile Spotlights Daniela Amodei and Mira Murati in Debate Over Women’s Power in AI

September 21, 2026 at 15:09 EDT

Foundation Models
Sales & Business
Funding & M&A

A new profile has turned a familiar AI-industry question into a power audit: women now run or help run some of the sector’s most consequential companies, yet Silicon Valley still struggles to make them as visible as its male icons. The piece places Anthropic President Daniela Amodei and Thinking Machines Lab CEO Mira Murati near the center of that debate as foundation-model companies absorb capital, compute and policy attention.

Sep 21, 2026 · AI leadership

AI's Power Gap Is Visible at the Top

Women are helping run frontier AI labs with huge valuations and major compute plans. The harder question is whether recognition and capital are spreading beyond a few outliers.

$965B

Anthropic private valuation cited for May 2026

$12B

Thinking Machines valuation after its seed round

$73.6B

2025 capital for startups with at least one female founder

82%

Male decision-makers at large U.S. VC firms

Female-founder capital rose, but concentration rose with it

$44.7B

2023

$73.6B

2025

Each block represents about $10 billion. The headline number improved, while AI mega-rounds did much of the lifting.

What supporters see

Women are leading operationally important AI organizations, shipping open-weights models, running executive teams and controlling major product roadmaps.

What critics flag

Capital and attention still cluster around a few labs, while gatekeepers remain mostly male and public visibility often trails real operating authority.

The power loop

Capital->Compute->Models->Policy access

The next test is whether that loop expands authority across the industry or keeps it concentrated around a small number of frontier labs.

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