OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma joins Anthropic
Durk Kingma, one of the brains behind OpenAI, has decided to hop over to Anthropic, a rival AI firm backed by Amazon and Google. He broke the news himself in a post on X. While he'll be working mostly from the Netherlands, he hasn't spilled the beans on which Anthropic division he'll be joining or leading.
Kingma's alignment with Anthropic's AI development approach
"Anthropic's approach to AI development resonates significantly with my own beliefs; looking forward to contributing to Anthropic's mission of developing powerful AI systems responsibly," wrote Kingma in his post. "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's extensive experience in AI and machine learning
Kingma, who has a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam, has quite an impressive resume. He spent several years as a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist. At OpenAI, he led the algorithms team to develop techniques primarily for generative AI models like DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT.
Kingma's entrepreneurial journey and return to Google
In 2018, Kingma switched gears to become a part-time angel investor and advisor for AI start-ups. He made his way back to Google in July of that year, where he kicked off Google Brain. This project quickly became one of the tech giant's top AI R&D labs before merging with DeepMind in 2023.
Anthropic's track record of attracting top AI talent
Anthropic's latest hire, Kingma, is just another example of the company's knack for attracting top AI talent. Earlier this year, they snagged Jan Leike, OpenAI's former safety lead. And in the same month, they brought on board Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram and Artifact, as their first head of product. Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, was previously the VP of research at OpenAI before he decided to launch his own venture.
