PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Aidan Clark

Aidan Clark is an AI researcher whose work spans distributed machine learning, speech synthesis, reinforcement learning and language-model training. He studied mathematics, computer science and classical languages at UC Berkeley and joined UnifyID's inaugural AI Fellowship in 2016. At DeepMind, he was thanked for feedback on TF-Replicator, and he coauthored GAN-TTS for speech synthesis and Podracer for reinforcement learning. The 2022 Chinchilla paper he coauthored earned a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award. At OpenAI, he led development of an open model in 2025 and trains models as of October 2026.

Now at
OpenAI
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2016

    UnifyID's AI Fellowship

    In November 2016, he joins UnifyID's inaugural Artificial Intelligence Fellowship as one of 16 fellows selected for the Fall 2016 cohort. At UC Berkeley, he studies mathematics, classical languages and computer science as a triple major.

  2. 2017

    CS 61B teaching assistant

    In spring 2017, he is a teaching assistant for UC Berkeley's CS 61B course while studying mathematics, computer science and classical languages.

  3. 2019

    TF-Replicator at DeepMind

    In 2019, the DeepMind Research Platform team thanks him for feedback during TF-Replicator's development. He coauthors the TF-Replicator paper, which describes a framework for distributed machine learning designed for DeepMind researchers.

  4. 2019

    GAN-TTS for speech synthesis

    In 2019, he coauthors “High Fidelity Speech Synthesis with Adversarial Networks,” which introduces GAN-TTS, a generative adversarial network for text-to-speech.

  5. 2021

    Podracer for reinforcement learning

    In 2021, he coauthors the Podracer architectures paper, whose authors argue that TPUs suit scalable, efficient and reproducible reinforcement-learning training.

  6. 2022

    Chinchilla at NeurIPS

    In 2022, he coauthors “An empirical analysis of compute-optimal large language model training,” which introduces the Chinchilla model. It finds that model size and training-token count should scale together, with each doubling of model size paired with a doubling of training tokens. NeurIPS lists the paper among its Outstanding Papers.

  7. April 2025–August 2025

    Leading OpenAI's open model

    In April 2025, he is OpenAI's vice president of research and leads development of its open model. In August 2025, he is listed as a coauthor on the gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b model card, which presents two open-weight reasoning models.

  8. As of October 2026

    OpenAI model training

    In March 2026, he is OpenAI's vice president of research (training). As of October 2026, he trains models at OpenAI.

Career

  1. NowOpenAIVice President of Research
  2. 2017University of California, BerkeleyTeaching Assistant

Education

  1. University of California, BerkeleyUndergraduate student

From the biography.

  1. 22 of 133 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes Aidan Clark. Our estimates of where OpenAI recruits came from and where 133 people with former OpenAI roles work now, including the companies and labs they founded.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Aidan Clark. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes Aidan Clark. We estimate that 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a company; 29% of moves starting at a university went to a company, and 76% ended the university role.
  4. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes OpenAI. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Aidan Clark yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. UnifyID Anoints 16 Distinguished Scientists for the AI Fellowship prweb.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Staff | CS 61B Spring 2017 sp17.datastructur.es. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. TF-Replicator: Distributed Machine Learning for Researchers deepmind.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. TF-Replicator: Distributed Machine Learning for Researchers arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. High Fidelity Speech Synthesis with Adversarial Networks arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Podracer architectures for scalable Reinforcement Learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Announcing the NeurIPS 2022 Awards blog.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. An empirical analysis of compute-optimal large language model training papers.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. OpenAI seeks to make its upcoming open AI model best-in-class techcrunch.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. OpenAI VP Of Research Aidan Clark Hints That AGI Has Already Arrived officechai.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. Aidan Clark — The Who's Who of AI | AI Weekly aiweekly.co. Checked 21 October 2026.