{"abstract":"Andrej Karpathy, one of the best-known AI researchers in the world and a founding member of OpenAI, announced Tuesday that he's joining rival AI lab Anthropic. Why it matters: The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent — and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds. Driving the news: Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's...","title":"OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic","sourceHref":"https://www.axios.com/2026/05/19/anthropic-openai-karpathy-andrej-claude?utm_source=microsoft","renderingRestriction":0,"authors":[{"name":"Madison Mills"}],"imageResources":[{"width":1366,"height":768,"quality":79,"url":"https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA22GeCQ.img","attribution":"Getty","title":"How the currency of the AI economy actually works","caption":"Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images","source":"msn","cmsId":"cms/api/amp/image/AA22GeCQ"}],"body":"<img data-reference=\"image\" data-document-id=\"cms/api/amp/image/AA22GeCQ\" /><p>Andrej Karpathy, one of the best-known AI researchers in the world and a founding member of <a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2026/05/18/musk-loses-ai-trial-openai-altman?utm_medium=partner&utm_source=microsoft-start&utm_content=link&utm_campaign=subs-partner-msfot-dailyessentials\">OpenAI</a>, announced Tuesday that he's joining rival AI lab <a href=\"https://www.axios.com/2026/04/13/anthropic-revenue-growth-ai?utm_medium=partner&utm_source=microsoft-start&utm_content=link&utm_campaign=subs-partner-msfot-dailyessentials\">Anthropic</a>.</p><p><strong>Why it matters: </strong>The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent — and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds.</p><p><strong>Driving the news: </strong>Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's pre-training team, which is responsible for the massive training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to Anthropic.</p><ul><li>Karpathy will help launch a new team focused on using Claude itself to accelerate pretraining research — an increasingly important frontier as AI companies race to automate parts of AI development.</li><li><strong>\"</strong>I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D,\" Karpathy said in a <a href=\"https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312\">post</a> on X. </li></ul><p><strong>Between the lines:</strong> Karpathy is a rare AI figure with credibility across research, industry and education.</p><ul><li>He was a founding member of OpenAI before serving as Tesla's director of AI, where he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot.</li><li>Karpathy coined the term \"vibe coding\" and <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwSVtQ7dziU\">recently described himself</a> as being in a \"state of AI psychosis\" since December — embracing \"tokenmaxxing\" and aggressively stress-testing frontier models.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom out:</strong> Since leaving Tesla in 2022, Karpathy has become one of AI's most influential public educators, building a massive following through technical explainers and educational content on YouTube and X.</p><ul><li>He said Tuesday that he remains \"deeply passionate about education\" and plans to return to that work \"in time.\"</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line: </strong>The AI race is often framed around massive funding rounds and scarce computing power. Just as important is the fierce competition for the small pool of researchers — like Karpathy — capable of advancing the frontier.</p><div><p><i><a href=\"https://www.axios.com/signup/am-pm?utm_source=microsoft-start&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=subs-partner-msoft-dailyessentials\">Get the rundown of the biggest stories of the day with Axios Daily Essentials.</a></i></p></div>","readTimeMin":2,"provider":{"id":"AA12xB8j","name":"Axios","companyLegalName":"Axios Media 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