Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma

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.

We’ve reached out to the company for more information and will update this post if we hear back.

“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 and large language models

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 founded Google Brain, which became one of the company’s premiere AI R&D labs before it merged with DeepMind in 2023.

Kingma’s hiring is yet another coup for Anthropic, which hired OpenAI’s former safety lead, Jan Leike, in May.

Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, was once the VP of research at OpenAI and reportedly split with OpenAI after a disagreement over the company’s direction — namely OpenAI’s 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.