Monzo and GoCardless Co-Founder Tom Blomfield Steps Back from Y Combinator to Join Anthropic’s Compute Team #

Tom Blomfield, co-founder of digital bank Monzo and payments firm GoCardless, is taking a leave of absence from Y Combinator to join Anthropic, where he will work on the compute team as a member of technical staff.

Blomfield announced the move on X on 13 July, writing that “powerful AI has the potential to improve the life of every human on earth” and that compute availability is “one of the most important issues to solve” as the industry moves into what he described as the early stages of recursive self-improvement. According to The Next Web, he will work alongside Tom Brown, Anthropic’s co-founder and chief compute officer, on the infrastructure supporting the company’s Claude model family.

Blomfield built his career in consumer products and fintech rather than data centres.

Blomfield co-founded GoCardless in 2011 and Monzo in 2015, serving as Monzo’s chief executive until 2020. He left the bank in early 2021, later telling TechCrunch he had stopped enjoying the role once the company was no longer a scrappy startup. Together, the two companies reached a combined peak valuation of more than $9 billion. Monzo has since passed 10 million customers and is reportedly targeting a London Stock Exchange listing at a valuation of between £6 billion and £7 billion. GoCardless has agreed to be acquired by Dutch payments group Mollie for approximately €1.05 billion, pending regulatory approval.

After leaving Monzo, Blomfield moved into venture investing, joining Y Combinator and becoming a full partner in 2023, where he mentored founders across four cohorts. His move to Anthropic is on a leave-of-absence basis, leaving open the possibility of a future return.

Anthropomorphic has confidentially filed for an initial public offering and could list as soon as this autumn.

Source: The Next Web