More than 200 community members gathered at Lake Ridge Academy on May 9, 2026 for the Spirit of ’76 Speaker Series, featuring a conversation between Emerge Inc. Co-founder Ed Skimin and Lorain County native Dr. Simon Kornblith of Anthropic, the company behind Claude AI.
Kornblith, a neuroscientist trained at Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is part of Anthropic’s pre-training team, working on the development of advanced AI systems. Prior to joining Anthropic, he spent six years at Google DeepMind.
During the discussion, Skimin and Kornblith explored how quickly the AI landscape is evolving. Kornblith joined Anthropic in September 2023 when the company had fewer than 200 employees. In roughly 30 months since:
- The team has grown from under 200 to around 3,000 (15x)
- Valuation has increased from $5B to $380B (76x)
- Revenue has scaled from under $100M to approximately $19B (190x)
The conversation focused on what this rapid progress means for communities, including the impact on jobs, trust, and how people interact with technology in their daily lives.
The event was organized by the Spirit of ’76 Speaker Series, which brings influential voices to the community to discuss issues shaping the future.
