Benjamin Mann is a co-founder of Anthropic and co-head of Anthropic Labs, the research division responsible for Claude’s most advanced capabilities. His path to one of the most consequential AI roles in the world ran through Columbia University, Google, and OpenAI — and yet, as of 2026, virtually no public biography of him exists. This profile fills that gap.
Education: Columbia University
Benjamin Mann studied computer science at Columbia University in New York City, graduating with a strong foundation in systems and algorithms. Columbia’s CS program has produced a notable number of AI researchers and startup founders, and Mann followed that tradition directly into product engineering and research roles.
At Google: Waze Carpool
After Columbia, Mann worked at Google as a senior engineer, where he contributed to Waze Carpool — Google’s carpooling feature built on top of the Waze navigation platform. The work gave him experience operating at massive scale and shipping consumer-facing products with millions of users. It also represented a departure from pure research: Mann has always moved between applied engineering and fundamental AI work.
At OpenAI: Architecting GPT-3
Mann joined OpenAI and became one of the core engineers behind GPT-3 — the 175-billion parameter language model that launched the modern AI era when it was released in 2020. While Tom Brown served as lead engineer, Mann was a key contributor to the architecture and training infrastructure that made GPT-3 possible. He is listed as a co-author on the landmark paper “Language Models are Few-Shot Learners.”
Co-Founding Anthropic
In 2021, Mann joined Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and five other OpenAI researchers in founding Anthropic. The co-founders shared a commitment to building AI that is safe, interpretable, and beneficial — and a belief that a dedicated safety-focused lab was necessary to pursue that goal seriously.
Role at Anthropic: Co-Leading Anthropic Labs
Mann co-leads Anthropic Labs alongside Mike Krieger, the Instagram co-founder who joined Anthropic in 2023. Anthropic Labs serves as the research and experimentation arm of the company — the team responsible for exploring Claude’s frontier capabilities, running novel experiments, and developing the next generation of features before they ship to users.
The pairing of Mann (deep AI research background) with Krieger (consumer product expertise at scale) reflects Anthropic’s increasing emphasis on making frontier AI research accessible and useful to everyday users, not just researchers and developers.
Public Profile and Media
Mann appeared on Lenny’s Podcast in July 2025, one of the rare public interviews he has given. The episode generated significant interest in the AI research community, touching on Anthropic’s product philosophy, the future of AI assistants, and the practical challenges of building systems that are both powerful and safe. Despite this, he remains one of the least-profiled founders of a major AI company.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Benjamin Mann’s role at Anthropic?
Benjamin Mann co-leads Anthropic Labs alongside Mike Krieger. Anthropic Labs is the research and experimentation division responsible for Claude’s frontier capabilities.
Where did Benjamin Mann work before Anthropic?
Mann worked at Google (on Waze Carpool) and OpenAI (as a core engineer on GPT-3) before co-founding Anthropic in 2021.
Did Benjamin Mann work on GPT-3?
Yes. Mann was a key architect and contributor to GPT-3 at OpenAI, and is a co-author on the landmark paper “Language Models are Few-Shot Learners.”
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