Anthropic has recruited Monzo cofounder and ex‑CEO Tom Blomfield to join its AI compute team. The US‑based tech giant, valued at $965 bn in May, has been on a global hiring spree, opening new offices across Europe and offering generous pay for engineering talent. Blomfield announced the move on X, saying he would take a leave from startup accelerator Y Combinator, where he has been a group partner since 2021.

"I'll be working with Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown on the compute team," Blomfield wrote. "Powerful AI can improve every human life, and as we enter early stages of recursive self‑improvement, compute availability becomes a critical issue."

Anthropic is expanding rapidly outside the US as AI talent competition intensifies. It has opened offices in London, Dublin and Zurich, and hired researchers and engineers from startups, universities and rival AI labs. The company has deepened its European presence through partnerships with startups and enterprises adopting its Claude models.

Last month, Anthropic launched Claude Science, a suite of AI tools for automating research in biology and chemistry, prompting European life‑sciences startups to explore its potential for drug discovery and scientific research.

Blomfield stepped down as Monzo CEO in 2020 after launching the UK challenger bank in 2015. He later led Y Combinator’s growth programme and became a prominent European startup investor and mentor.