Comment,Durk Kingma, one of the lesser-known co-founders of OpenAI, today announced that he’ll be joining Anthropic.,In a series of posts on X, Kingma revealed that he’ll be working mostly remotely, from the Netherlands (where he’s based), but didn’t say which Anthropic org he’ll be joining — or leading. ,Reached for comment, an Anthropic spokesperson pointed to Kingma’s posts.,“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 has a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Amsterdam, spent several years as a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI’s founding team as a research scientist. At OpenAI, Kingma focused on basic research, leading the algorithms team to develop techniques and methods primarily for generative AI models, including image generators (e.g. DALL-E 3) and large language models (e.g. ChatGPT).,In 2018, Kingma left to become a part-time angel investor and advisor for AI startups. He rejoined Google in July of that year, and started at Google Brain, which became one of the tech giant’s premiere AI R&D labs before it merged with DeepMind in 2023.,Kingma’s hiring is yet another talent coup for Anthropic, which recruited OpenAI’s former safety lead, Jan Leike, in May, and another OpenAI co-founder, John Schulman, in August. The company made an additional splashy hire in May, appointing Instagram and Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger as its first head of product.,Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, was once the VP of research at OpenAI, and reportedly split with the firm after a disagreement over OpenAI’s roadmap — namely its growing commercial focus. Amodei brought with him a number of ex-OpenAI employees to launch Anthropic, including OpenAI’s former policy lead Jack Clark.,Anthropic has often attempted to position itself as more safety-focused than OpenAI.
