The AI startup Anthropic is siphoning top talent from OpenAI and Google's DeepMind.
It's eight times as likely for an OpenAI engineer to join Anthropic than vice versa, according to a report from venture capital firm SignalFire published late last month, based on LinkedIn data. The trend was even more pronounced for DeepMind, Google's AI division, where the ratio was 11:1 in Anthropic's favor.
In a fierce war for AI talent, Anthropic's strong positioning on safety and technical chops, as well as its earlier-stage startup status, have all helped it snap up talent, the report said. It has poached top leaders, including two of OpenAI's cofounders. Anthropic itself was formed out of a group of former OpenAI employees.
Anthropic also has a strong retention rate, SignalFire found, with an 80% rate compared to OpenAI's 67%. DeepMind followed closely behind Anthropic with a 78% retention rate.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are growing fast. Anthropic's careers page lists just over 200 positions, while OpenAI lists almost 330.
Safety first
Top OpenAI leaders have left for Anthropic in part because of its focus on AI safety.
For example, Jan Leike jumped ship from OpenAI in 2024. He co-led its superalignment team, which aims to keep future superintelligent AI systems "aligned" with human values. In an X post about his resignation, Leike said that OpenAI's "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." He now co-leads Anthropic's alignment team.
OpenAI cofounder John Schulman also resigned last year to join OpenAI, writing on X he wanted to "deepen" his focus on AI alignment.
Schulman has since left Anthropic to join ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's startup, Thinking Machines. As Business Insider previously reported, Thinking Machines is seeking upwards of $2 billion for its seed round.
Schulman isn't the only OpenAI cofounder to have joined Anthropic. So did AI researcher Durk Kingma, who also worked for several years at DeepMind.
Anthropic has also poached several prominent DeepMind staff. It hired DeepMind senior staff research scientist Neil Housby to set up its new office in Zurich, as Housby revealed on X earlier this year.
Anthropic also hired research scientist Nicholas Carlini out of DeepMind this spring after he spent seven years working for Google. In his blog post, Carlini wrote that "the people at Anthropic actually care about the kinds of safety concerns I care about, and will let me work on them."
SignalFire also attributes the talent shift partly to Anthropic's AI assistant, Claude, gaining popularity among developers — though OpenAI's ChatGPT is a popular coding tool, too.
"Engineers often gravitate toward companies whose products they admire and use," the report says.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted earlier this year that AI will soon generate 90% of the code developers are in charge of.
Early stage has its advantages
Anthropic's position as an earlier-stage company could also help. OpenAI, valued at $300 billion, has existed since 2015, while Anthropic, valued at $61.5 billion, was founded in 2021. And Google has long been a public company.
The prospect of getting early equity can be more enticing with an earlier-stage company like Anthropic, said Zuhayeer Musa, the cofounder of engineer compensation platform Levels.fyi.
"People may see much more future upside at Anthropic than joining OpenAI, even though growth is quite strong at both," Musa said.
Also, there may be fewer Anthropic veterans looking to switch in the first place, SignalFire's head of research, Asher Bantock, told Business Insider.
Anthropic declined to comment. OpenAI and Google didn't respond to requests for comment.
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