HomeAndrej Karpathy, OpenAI co-founder, joins Anthropic pre-training team
Andrej Karpathy, the AI researcher who co-founded and previously worked at OpenAI, and before that led AI at Tesla, has joined Anthropic.
“I’ve joined Anthropic,” Karpathy posted on X on Tuesday. “I believe the next few years at the frontier of large language models will be especially formative. I’m excited to join the team and return to R&D.”
Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. 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. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) May 19, 2026
Karpathy started at Anthropic this week, working on pre-training under team lead Nick Joseph. Pre-training handles the large-scale training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to the company. It’s also one of the most expensive, compute-intensive phases in building a frontier model.
An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch that Karpathy will establish a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pre-training research.
Karpathy is among the few researchers who can bridge the gap between LLM theory and large-scale training practice. Tapping him to build such a team signals that Anthropic believes AI-assisted research—rather than pure compute—is how it stays competitive with OpenAI and Google.
While at OpenAI, Karpathy focused on deep learning and computer vision until he left in 2017 to join Tesla. He led Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot programs before departing in 2022.
He then returned to OpenAI for a year before leaving again in 2024 to start Eureka Labs, a startup dedicated to applying AI assistants to education.
Karpathy hasn’t shared many updates on Eureka Labs since its launch, and it’s unclear whether the renowned researcher will continue with the startup. He has also taught an online course called Neural Networks: Zero to Hero, which helps students learn to build neural networks from scratch in code, and he runs a YouTube channel where he semi-regularly posts lectures on LLMs and AI.
“I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time,” Karpathy said.
TechCrunch has reached out to Karpathy for comment.
Separately, Anthropic has also brought on Chris Rohlf to its frontier red team, which stress-tests advanced AI models against severe threats. Rohlf is a cybersecurity veteran with more than 20 years of experience. He previously worked at Yahoo’s respected cybersecurity team known as “The Paranoids,” and more recently at Meta, where he spent six years before joining Anthropic. Rohlf was also a fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where he worked on the CyberAI project.
“We have a real opportunity in front of us to dramatically improve cybersecurity with AI,” Rohlf said in an X post. “I can’t think of a better company or team to join at this critical moment in time.”
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Andrej Karpathy, the AI researcher who co-founded and previously worked at OpenAI, and before that led AI at Tesla, has joined Anthropic.
“I’ve joined Anthropic,” Karpathy posted on X on Tuesday. “I believe the next few years at the frontier of large language models will be especially formative. I’m excited to join the team and return to R&D.”
Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. 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. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) May 19, 2026
Karpathy started at Anthropic this week, working on pre-training under team lead Nick Joseph. Pre-training handles the large-scale training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to the company. It’s also one of the most expensive, compute-intensive phases in building a frontier model.
An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch that Karpathy will establish a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pre-training research.
Karpathy is among the few researchers who can bridge the gap between LLM theory and large-scale training practice. Tapping him to build such a team signals that Anthropic believes AI-assisted research—rather than pure compute—is how it stays competitive with OpenAI and Google.
While at OpenAI, Karpathy focused on deep learning and computer vision until he left in 2017 to join Tesla. He led Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot programs before departing in 2022.
He then returned to OpenAI for a year before leaving again in 2024 to start Eureka Labs, a startup dedicated to applying AI assistants to education.
Karpathy hasn’t shared many updates on Eureka Labs since its launch, and it’s unclear whether the renowned researcher will continue with the startup. He has also taught an online course called Neural Networks: Zero to Hero, which helps students learn to build neural networks from scratch in code, and he runs a YouTube channel where he semi-regularly posts lectures on LLMs and AI.
“I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time,” Karpathy said.
TechCrunch has reached out to Karpathy for comment.
Separately, Anthropic has also brought on Chris Rohlf to its frontier red team, which stress-tests advanced AI models against severe threats. Rohlf is a cybersecurity veteran with more than 20 years of experience. He previously worked at Yahoo’s respected cybersecurity team known as “The Paranoids,” and more recently at Meta, where he spent six years before joining Anthropic. Rohlf was also a fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where he worked on the CyberAI project.
“We have a real opportunity in front of us to dramatically improve cybersecurity with AI,” Rohlf said in an X post. “I can’t think of a better company or team to join at this critical moment in time.”
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