Ask HN: Why are so many accomplished founders joining Anthropic?

#1

Post by guru3s » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 5:04 AM UTC

A striking number of people who had already built successful companies or held unusually high-status roles are choosing to work at Anthropic.

> Recently, Tom Blomfield, co-founder of Monzo and GoCardless and former YC partner

> Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram

> Andrej Karpathy, founding OpenAI member

> Peter Bailis, CTO of Workday

I am mostly curious because they could presumably have raised money for another startup, invested, or retired. Instead, they chose to become employees with deliberately ordinary titles.

If this is not a biased view, what really explains it? Confidence in Anthropic’s leadership, It's research direction, equity ahead of a possible IPO, or somthing else?

I’d especially like to hear from people who have considered joining a frontier lab after founding a company.

Re: Ask HN: Why are so many accomplished founders joining Anthropic?

#2

Post by colesantiago » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 5:06 AM UTC

It is because of pre IPO money.

Until Anthropic and OpenAI IPO, it is no brainer to join and it is almost risk free to get equity and make a huge amount of money before they IPO.

Just wait until the IPO is done and the lockup period is over, and you will see lots of star employees leaving, some making their own VC firms, some retiring or some just making huge expensive purchases.

Nothing wrong with this, but it is a huge reason why they these "well known" tech execs are joining now.

Re: Ask HN: Why are so many accomplished founders joining Anthropic?

#3

Post by onion2k » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 5:14 AM UTC

colesantiago wrote: post #2

It is because of pre IPO money. Until Anthropic and OpenAI IPO, it is no brainer to join and it is almost risk free to get equity and make a huge amount of money before they IPO. Just wait until the IPO is done and the lockup period is over, and you will see lots of star employees leaving, some making their own VC firms, some retiring or some just making huge expensive purchases. Nothing wrong with this, but it is a…

These people are already massively rich and likely have opportunities to join any tech org that's growing, and any of those opportunities could make them even richer. It doesn't really explain why Anthropic is their apparent best option.

It's probably just the most interesting and challenging tech company right now (that's hiring high profile roles?). There's lots of other companies doing interesting things but if your expertise is software applied to a complex domain, Anthropic probably comes out on top.

Re: Ask HN: Why are so many accomplished founders joining Anthropic?

#4

Post by colesantiago » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #3

colesantiago wrote: post #2

It is because of pre IPO money. Until Anthropic and OpenAI IPO, it is no brainer to join and it is almost risk free to get equity and make a huge amount of money before they IPO. Just wait until the IPO is done and the lockup period is over, and you will see lots of star employees leaving, some making their own VC firms, some retiring or some just making huge expensive purchases. Nothing wrong with this, but it is a…

These people are already massively rich and likely have opportunities to join any tech org that's growing, and any of those opportunities could make them even richer. It doesn't really explain why Anthropic is their apparent best option. It's probably just the most interesting and challenging tech company right now (that's hiring high profile roles?). There's lots of other companies doing interesting things but if yo…

> These people are already massively rich...

Maybe they want the highest likelihood be even more richer and Anthropic gives them this.

Equity in a $1TN company pre IPO is very attractive than investing in startups and waiting 10 years for an exit.