Anthropic Hires OpenAI Co-Founder Durk Kingma in Ongoing Talent War
OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma joins Anthropic to help develop AI systems responsibly, working mostly remotely from the Netherlands. This latest hire continues Anthropic's successful streak of recruiting top talent from its chief rival.
OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma announces he is joining Anthropic to help develop powerful AI systems responsibly. He states that Anthropic's approach to AI development aligns significantly with his own beliefs, and he looks forward to working with the talented team. Kingma plans to work mostly remotely from the Netherlands while visiting the San Francisco Bay Area as frequently as possible.
Kingma brings extensive machine learning expertise to Anthropic, holding a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam and having served as a doctoral fellow at Google. As a member of OpenAI's founding team, he leads the algorithms team in developing techniques for generative AI models like DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT. After leaving OpenAI in 2018, he works as an angel investor before rejoining Google Brain, which later merges with DeepMind.
This hiring represents yet another major talent acquisition for Anthropic in its ongoing competition with OpenAI. The company previously recruits OpenAI's former safety lead Jan Leike and co-founder John Schulman earlier this year. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, himself a former OpenAI VP of research, continues to build a team of ex-OpenAI employees to position Anthropic as a more safety-focused AI developer.