Monzo co-founder Blomfield joins Anthropic

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Blomfield revealed on X that he is taking a leave of absence from venture capital firm Y Combinator to join Anthropic co-founder and chief compute officer Tom Brown's compute team.

Says Blomfield: "Powerful AI has the potential to improve the life of every human on earth and, as we enter the early stages of recursive self-improvement, availability of compute becomes one of the most important issues to solve."

Having built Monzo up into a major player in the UK banking market, Blomfield transitioned from CEO to president in 2020. He left the following year, admitting that the pressure of growing the firm in the midst of a global pandemic had taken a toll on his mental health.

Last year he kicked up a stir by tolling the death knell of the humble software engineer, claiming that AI will soon be "provably and obviously better at basically every facet" of coding.

In a blog on AI's impact on the future of society, he wrote: "I'm extremely hopeful for the future. I think we may be able to cure basically every known disease. We may dramatically extend the human lifespan. This future could be very positive for humanity.

"I'm also extremely worried. I think the short-term impact on hundreds of millions of people is going to be very profound, and I don't think many people are prepared."