Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder, Durk Kingma.
Anthropic has welcomed Durk Kingma, one of the co-founders of OpenAI. Before joining this company, Kingma was the creator of Google's Google Brain research and development lab in artificial intelligence.
Durk Kingma, one of the lesser-known co-founders of OpenAI, has announced his joining Anthropic. Through several posts on X, Kingma shared that he will largely be working remotely from the Netherlands, although he did not specify which organization within Anthropic he will join or what his role will be.
In his messages, he mentioned: "The way Anthropic approaches the development of artificial intelligence resonates significantly with my own beliefs. I look forward to contributing to Anthropic's mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly. I can't wait to work with their talented team, which includes several great former colleagues from OpenAI and Google, and to tackle the challenges that arise!"
Kingma holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam and spent several years as a doctoral researcher at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist. During his time at OpenAI, he focused on fundamental research and led the algorithms team, where he developed techniques for generative AI models, such as image generators (e.g., DALL-E 3) and large language models (e.g., ChatGPT).
In 2018, Kingma left OpenAI to become an angel investor and part-time advisor to AI startups. He returned to Google in July of that year, where he joined Google Brain, a leading AI research and development lab, which merged with DeepMind in 2023.
Kingma's hiring marks another significant achievement in talent acquisition for Anthropic, which had already recruited Jan Leike, former head of safety at OpenAI, in May, and another OpenAI co-founder, John Schulman, in August. Additionally, in May, the company garnered attention by naming Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and Artifact, as its first product chief.
Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, was previously vice president of research at OpenAI and departed the company following a disagreement over its roadmap, which increasingly focused on commercial aspects. Amodei brought several former OpenAI employees with him to launch Anthropic, including Jack Clark, former policy lead at OpenAI. Anthropic has sought to position itself as a company more focused on safety compared to OpenAI.
