Anthropic Hires AI Veteran Andrej Karpathy to Boost Pretraining Research
Anthropic welcomes OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI lead Andrej Karpathy to spearhead pretraining research using Claude. This high-profile hire highlights the escalating talent war between Anthropic and OpenAI.
Anthropic welcomes Andrej Karpathy, an artificial intelligence researcher who co-founded OpenAI and previously led the AI division at Tesla. Karpathy announces his new role on social media, expressing enthusiasm about returning to hands-on research and development during what he calls a formative period for large language models. He starts his new position this week.
In his new role, Karpathy builds a dedicated team focused on using Anthropic's Claude model to accelerate pretraining research. This specific type of research is crucial because it helps AI models acquire their foundational knowledge and core capabilities. His addition represents a major strategic move for Anthropic as it seeks to push the boundaries of AI development.
This hire marks another significant talent acquisition for Anthropic as it competes fiercely with OpenAI and prepares to surpass its rival in private market valuation. Karpathy's career spans notable chapters, including a legendary recruitment by Elon Musk that caused friction between Tesla and OpenAI, a brief return to OpenAI, and a stint founding the AI education startup Eureka Labs.