Thompson Paine

Thompson Paine leads Strategic Product & Operations at Anthropic, a frontier AI research lab with safety research and deployment at scale as its core mission. He has deep experience leading and scaling product and business functions in AI, financial technology, and education software. His past edtech adventures include leading Business Operations at Quizlet, where he joined as the sixth full-time team member and helped scale Quizlet to 30M monthly active students and teachers around the world. Thompson also previously served in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, reporting on CCP leadership politics, human rights, and other topics related to China’s domestic and foreign policies. Paine is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Vanderbilt University Law School, teaching on law, emerging technologies, and U.S.-China competition, and serves on the board of two K-8 charter schools. He has a B.A. in Political Science and Asian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a J.D. and M.B.A. from Stanford University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.