The chief technology officer for Microsoft's Azure Core has joined Anthropic.
Marcus Fontoura spent the last year-and-a-half in the role, where he focused on the use of AI for engineering systems and developer productivity, the overall architecture for Azure, and led the Azure Networking team.
Fontoura previously worked at Microsoft, in a separate eight-year stint, including as a technical fellow and CVP of Azure Compute.
He also spent more than two years as CTO and head of engineering at Brazilian financial services company Stone, and has held roles at Google, IBM, and Yahoo. Fontoura is the author of Human Agency in a Digital World, a self-help book for living and working with AI.
"Throughout my career, from research labs to hyperscale cloud platforms, I’ve always been motivated by technology’s potential to expand human capability," Fontoura said.
"Over the last few years, that belief has become even stronger. AI is one of the most important technological shifts of our lifetime. Not because it replaces humans, but because it has the potential to amplify human creativity, learning, productivity, and agency at a scale we’ve never seen before."
He added: "One of the reasons I’m so excited to join Anthropic is the company’s clear commitment to building AI responsibly, ethically, and with deep consideration for its long-term impact on society. I’ve been consistently impressed by the team and leadership, the depth of the technical work, and the focus on important issues, such as safety, alignment of values and technology, and human-centered design."
As a member of the technical staff, Fontoura will "help build the next generation of AI systems."
Fontoura joins a number of recent hires at Anthropic, including those from Google, Meta, and Brookfield.
The company is planning to go public soon but was recently forced by the US government to block foreign nationals from accessing its latest AI models. As a result, the Anthropic took down its Fable model.