Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma

Durk Kingma, co-founder of OpenAI, joins Anthropic to work on AI development remotely from the Netherlands.

: Durk Kingma, a co-founder of OpenAI, will be joining Anthropic to work mostly remotely from the Netherlands. Kingma, with a Ph.D. in machine learning, previously worked at Google Brain and OpenAI. This move follows Anthropic's trend of hiring high-profile AI talent, including Jan Leike and John Schulman. Anthropic aims to position itself as a safety-focused AI firm under CEO Dario Amodei.

Durk Kingma, one of OpenAI's lesser-known co-founders, will be joining Anthropic and working mostly remotely from the Netherlands. Kingma holds a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam and was a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist. He led the algorithms team there focusing on generative AI models like DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT.

In 2018, Kingma transitioned to an angel investor and advisor role for AI startups and then rejoined Google Brain. His hiring is the latest in a series of high-profile recruitments for Anthropic, which also includes Jan Leike and John Schulman, both former OpenAI employees. Earlier, Mike Krieger was appointed as Anthropic's head of product.

Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, who previously served as VP of research at OpenAI, established the company after a disagreement over OpenAI's commercial focus. Anthropic aims to distinguish itself as a more safety-focused AI research firm and has retained several ex-OpenAI employees, including former policy lead Jack Clark, to push this vision forward.

AI developmentDurk KingmaAnthropic