Summary:
Anthropic hires HumanLoop's cofounders and senior team, marking a significant AI talent acquisition
HumanLoop, a UCL spinout, was backed by Y Combinator, Index Ventures, and Albion for its LLM integration platform
The move highlights the growing competition for AI talent, with US giants increasingly looking to Europe
Anthropic's hiring spree includes offering salaries up to £340k for AI engineers in London
This trend includes Microsoft, Salesforce, and NiCE making similar moves to secure top AI talent
Anthropic, the US tech giant behind the AI chatbot Claude, has made a significant move by hiring the three cofounders and several senior employees from London-based AI startup HumanLoop. This development underscores the intensifying global competition for AI talent, with US companies increasingly looking to Europe for expertise.
The HumanLoop Story
Founded in 2020 as a spinout from University College London (UCL), HumanLoop quickly made a name for itself with its enterprise AI platform. The startup attracted investments from top-tier VC firms like Y Combinator, Index Ventures, and Albion, thanks to its innovative approach to evaluating and integrating large language models (LLMs) at scale.
The Transition
In July, HumanLoop informed its customers about the impending shutdown of its platform, citing a "very difficult decision" tied to an acquisition process. However, it's now clear that while Anthropic has hired around 10 HumanLoop employees, including cofounders Raza Habib (CEO), Peter Hayes (CTO), and Jordan Burgess (CPO), it hasn't acquired the company or its intellectual property.
Why This Matters
Brad Abrams, Anthropic's API product lead, expressed excitement about the new hires, highlighting their "proven experience in AI tooling and evaluation" as invaluable for advancing AI safety and useful AI systems. This move is part of a broader trend where US tech giants are either acquiring companies to onboard their employees or hiring entire teams outright to secure top talent.
The Bigger Picture
The competition for AI talent is fiercer than ever. Recent examples include Microsoft poaching the cofounders of British video-generation platform Haiper, Salesforce acquiring London-based AI startup Convergence, and NiCE's nearly $1bn acquisition of Germany's Cognigy. Anthropic itself has been on a hiring spree in Europe, offering salaries as high as £340k for AI engineers in London.
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