WorkMay 19, 2026via CNBC Technology
Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, former Tesla AI leader
Why it matters
A major AI talent acquisition signals Anthropic's shift in research direction and represents a significant poach from both OpenAI and Tesla. This hire carries strategic weight for reasoning, scaling, and agent capabilities.
Key signals
- Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic
- Karpathy is OpenAI co-founder
- Karpathy was Tesla's former AI/Autopilot lead
- Published May 19, 2026
- Hire sourced from two major AI powerhouses (OpenAI + Tesla)
The hook
Andrej Karpathy just joined Anthropic. That's an OpenAI co-founder + Tesla's AI leader landing at Claude's company.
Andrej Karpathy, an artificial intelligence researcher who co-founded OpenAI before getting poached by Tesla, said he's joining Anthropic.