Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit crossed paths with Cami Clark years before she became known as the wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and a familiar presence in Silicon Valley’s AI elite.According to Wall Street Journal report, in 2011, Clark and business partner Michelle Capocefalo were seeking investors for Eddice, a women-focused pornography startup they described as a “revolutionary porn company”. Literary agent John Brockman introduced the two women to Epstein, who was then a registered sex offender, according to recently released government files.Brockman wrote to Epstein: “You should connect for dinner with my girls — Cami and Michelle. They’re in LA raising money for porn movie aimed at women’s market.”Clark soon followed up herself. Reminding Epstein of their earlier meeting, she wrote: “We have the free luxury porn company. Does that ring a bell?”Epstein replied: “Yes, a loud gong.”Clark pitched him on investing in the company. Epstein declined. She then switched to another venture, a “social dieting app + website geared toward women” that would combine data from fitness trackers and information on nutrition, menstrual cycles, mood and location.Their interaction did not end there. According to government-released Epstein files, Clark’s correspondence with him continued for roughly two years. She invited him to a housewarming party and later connected with him on LinkedIn.The Epstein connection is one chapter in the unconventional career of a woman who is now close to one of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence.
From ‘luxury porn’ to Silicon Valley
Clark, born in Reno, Nevada, in 1979, did not graduate from college and moved through a series of entrepreneurial ventures. At 20, she married Reno architect Waldemar Eklof III, who was 64 at the time. They divorced three years later. She later filed for bankruptcy after a San Francisco apartment was foreclosed on.Around 2010, Clark and Capocefalo founded Eddice. The company sought to present itself as a women-focused, “sex-positive” alternative to the traditionally male-oriented pornography industry. Its tagline was “intellectually promiscuous”.The venture sought $350,000 to produce its first four films, including “American Girl in Paris”.Her ambitions soon took her deeper into Silicon Valley’s elite networks. From 2011, Clark was in a relationship with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which lasted three years. Schmidt also invested in one of her later women’s-health ventures.Clark began dating Amodei in 2014, when he was still an academic and working as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford. Amodei had earned a PhD in computational neuroscience from Princeton and would later work at Baidu, Google and OpenAI.As Amodei rose through the AI world, Clark became part of his wider professional network. She introduced her close friend Mira Murati to OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. Murati later became OpenAI’s chief technology officer.Clark also helped bring Amodei and Schmidt together. In 2018, Schmidt visited the couple at their San Francisco apartment and was impressed by their ideas, he later told Bloomberg.
A connection to Anthropic’s founding
In December 2020, Amodei, his sister Daniela and five other employees left OpenAI to establish Anthropic following tensions over power at the company.Anthropic announced a $124 million Series A round in May 2021, with Schmidt among the investors.Clark wanted a formal financial role in the new company. In February 2021, she proposed a venture fund to Schmidt called the “Mother of AGI Fund”.A 40-page proposal described the fund as “an elegant solution to formalize Cami’s involvement in Anthropic (Dario’s company), manage Eric’s investment,” while also investing in “the AGI ecosystem”. The proposal did not move forward after failing to win support from others at Anthropic.The couple married in Italy not long afterward. Clark has never held an official role at Anthropic, but people close to the company describe her as a sounding board and strategic adviser to Amodei. She is frequently seen alongside him at major technology and political gatherings.
The woman alongside Anthropic’s CEO
Clark’s influence is striking partly because she remains relatively obscure outside the circles surrounding Amodei.At an AI summit in New Delhi earlier this year, executives were allowed to bring one additional person. While most brought colleagues, Amodei brought Clark. She has also appeared with him at Davos and the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, where she has spoken with investors and other influential figures.Despite their marriage, details about Clark have remained scarce online. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that efforts had been made to remove references to her. Amodei’s Wikipedia page acknowledged his marriage only this summer and still does not identify his wife. Even Claude has responded to queries about her husband’s marital status by saying it “doesn’t seem to be clearly confirmed.”Clark’s later career also moved beyond the adult-entertainment business into women’s health technology. The social-dieting venture she once pitched to Epstein evolved into a women’s healthcare AI company.
At the centre of Anthropic’s Washington battle
Clark’s role has become more notable as Anthropic has entered the political spotlight.The company clashed with the Trump administration after Amodei refused to drop restrictions on how Claude could be used by the Pentagon. The government labelled Anthropic a supply-chain risk, while the company challenged the designation in court. Additional restrictions imposed on Anthropic’s AI models were later dropped.Clark has told people involved in politics that Anthropic sees its mission as protecting America and that the company is not as “woke” as its critics might believe.At the Sun Valley conference in July, she spent much of the week alongside Amodei, had lunch with Ivanka Trump and spoke with Jared Kushner, whom Amodei had previously approached about investing.
