While Open AI doubles down on becoming a for-profit company with a lot of it’s original guard rails removed, the brain drain to Anthropic goes on.
Durk Kingma, one of OpenAI’s lesser-known co-founders, has joined Anthropic. He announced the news on X, mentioning that he will mostly work remotely from the Netherlands, where he lives, but didn’t share details about his specific role at Anthropic.
An Anthropic spokesperson pointed to Kingma’s posts for comment.
“Anthropic’s approach to AI development resonates significantly with my own beliefs,” Kingma wrote. “[L]ooking forward to contributing to Anthropic’s mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly. Can’t wait to work with their talented team, including a number of great ex-colleagues from OpenAI and Google, and tackle the challenges ahead!”
Kingma, who holds a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam, was part of Google before helping to found OpenAI. At OpenAI, he worked on research and led a team focused on developing AI models like DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT.
In 2018, he left OpenAI to become a part-time advisor and investor in AI startups. He later rejoined Google Brain, which merged with DeepMind in 2023.
Kingma’s hiring follows other notable additions to Anthropic, including Jan Leike, OpenAI’s former safety lead, and John Schulman, another OpenAI co-founder. In May, Anthropic also brought on Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger as head of product.