Meet Andrej Karpathy: Ex-OpenAI Researcher Now Joining AI Rival Anthropic

Andrej Karpathy has joined Anthropic, marking another major development in the fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The former OpenAI researcher shared the update on X, (formerly Twitter).

Karpathy said he feels “very excited” to return to research and development after spending recent months focusing on education-related projects. His decision comes at a time when artificial intelligence companies continue competing aggressively for experienced researchers.

Karpathy noted that the next few years could become especially important for artificial intelligence development. He also shared that he remains deeply interested in education and plans to continue working in that area in the future.

Anthropic confirmed that Karpathy will join its pretraining division, the team responsible for large-scale testing and development work behind Claude. According to reports, he will report to Nicholas Joseph, another former OpenAI employee.

Andrej Karpathy's AI Career

Karpathy has built a strong reputation in the technology world because of both his research and teaching style. Unlike many artificial intelligence experts, he became widely known for explaining difficult technical concepts in simple and accessible language through online lectures and coding tutorials.

Karpathy became one of the founding research scientists at OpenAI and worked there between 2015 and 2017. During that period, the company started drawing global attention for its breakthroughs in artificial intelligence research.

However, he later left OpenAI and joined Tesla as Director of AI. There, he led the Autopilot computer vision team and worked on systems designed to help vehicles understand roads, traffic movement and surrounding objects.

Karpathy returned to OpenAI in 2023 for a second stint at the company. During the leadership turmoil involving Sam Altman, he openly backed the chief executive officer as uncertainty grew around OpenAI’s future.

However, he left the company again in February 2024 and later launched Eureka Labs, a start-up focused on AI-based learning tools. He also became widely known for popularising the term “vibe coding”, which refers to using simple text prompts to make AI systems write code or build apps.

Andrej Karpathy's Background

Born in Czechoslovakia, he studied computer science and physics at the University of Toronto before completing a master’s degree at the University of British Columbia.

He then joined Stanford University and completed his doctorate under computer vision researcher Fei-Fei Li in 2015. His research focused on neural networks, computer vision and natural language processing, technologies that now power many modern artificial intelligence systems.

Over the years, Karpathy became widely known in the tech industry for both his work and teaching style. Many people followed his online lessons because he made difficult artificial intelligence topics easier to understand.