WorkMay 19, 2026via TechCrunch AI
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic’s pre-training team
Why it matters
A founding-era OpenAI researcher moving to Anthropic signals competitive pressure on model development and suggests Anthropic is doubling down on foundational capabilities. This is one of the highest-profile poaches between the two labs.
Key signals
- Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI co-founder) joins Anthropic
- Joining Anthropic's pre-training team
- Previously: co-founder and VP of Research at OpenAI
- Previously: led Tesla AI/Autopilot efforts
- Published May 19, 2026
The hook
OpenAI's co-founder Andrej Karpathy just joined Anthropic's pre-training team. That's a major talent shift in the model wars.
Andrej Karpathy has joined Anthropic to work on pre-training. He previously co-founded and worked at OpenAI and led computer vision and AI at Tesla.