Durk Kingma, one of OpenAI's lesser-known co-founders, today announced that he will be joining Anthropic.
In a series of posts about X, Kingma revealed that he would mostly work remotely from the Netherlands (where he is based), but did not say which human organization he would join or lead.
Reached for comment, an Anthropic spokesperson pointed to Kingma's post.
I work (primarily) from the Netherlands, but plan to visit the San Francisco Bay Area as often as possible.
— Daruk Kingma (@dpkingma) October 1, 2024
“Anthropic’s approach to AI development resonates strongly with my own beliefs,” Kingma wrote. “[L]I look forward to contributing to Anthropic's mission to responsibly develop powerful AI systems. I can't wait to work with our talented team, including many great former colleagues from OpenAI and Google, to tackle the challenges ahead. ”
Mr. Kingma holds a Ph.D. He completed his PhD in machine learning at the University of Amsterdam and spent several years as a postdoc at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist. At OpenAI, Kingma focuses on basic research and leads the algorithm team, primarily developing technologies and methods for generative AI models such as image generators (e.g. DALL-E 3) and large-scale language models (e.g. ChatGPT). Developed.
In 2018, Kingma left to become a part-time angel investor and advisor to AI startups. He rejoined Google in July of the same year and founded Google Brain. Google Brain became one of the company's main AI research and development labs until its merger with DeepMind in 2023.
Kingma's hiring is another talent coup for Anthropic, which hired former OpenAI safety chief Jan Leike in May. That same month, the company made an even more splashy hire, naming Instagram and Artifact co-founder Mike Krieger as its first head of product.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei previously served as OpenAI's vice president of research, but he reportedly parted ways with the company over disagreements over OpenAI's roadmap and expanding its commercial focus. Masu. Amodei launched Anthropic with a number of former OpenAI employees, including Jack Clark, OpenAI's former policy leader.
Anthropic has sought to position itself as a more safety-oriented company than OpenAI.