Key facts
- Successful tech entrepreneurs and executives are returning to full-time roles in the AI sector.
- Many are joining major AI labs like Anthropic or founding new AI startups.
- The perceived early stage of large language model (LLM) development is a key motivator.
- The potential for significant financial gains is also a driving factor.
- The "member of technical staff" title is a common designation for technical roles at leading AI firms.
A notable trend is emerging among highly successful tech figures: a return to hands-on roles in the artificial intelligence sector. This movement appears driven by a combination of FOMO (fear of missing out) on AI's transformative potential and the prospect of substantial financial rewards.
Tom Blomfield, known for co-founding GoCardless and Monzo, has taken a leave from his role as a Y Combinator Group Partner to join Anthropic as a member of technical staff on its compute team. He cited the formative nature of the next few years in large language models (LLMs) as his motivation.
He is not alone in this shift. Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger joined Anthropic as Chief Product Officer in 2024. Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI and former AI lead at Tesla, also joined Anthropic's pre-training team, echoing Blomfield's sentiment about the critical period for LLMs.
Some established figures are launching their own AI ventures. Chamath Palihapitiya, who has largely focused on investment and media since leaving Facebook, has taken his first full-time operating role in over a decade as CEO of 8090 Labs, an enterprise AI coding startup. The company recently announced a $135 million Series A funding round led by Salesforce Ventures.
Similarly, Eric Wu, who previously led Opendoor, has launched NavigateAI, an AI "copilot" for construction workers, securing $25 million in seed funding. Wu expressed a desire to avoid future regret by engaging with the AI revolution.
The deliberate choice of the title "member of technical staff" by companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, regardless of seniority, underscores the desire for flat, non-hierarchical technical contributions. This is the same title Peter Bailis adopted upon joining Anthropic, shortly after serving as Workday's CTO overseeing AI strategy.