Yesterday Sam Blackshear, Sui co-founder/CTO and creator of Move, left Mysten Labs for Anthropic to do defensive security research.
Let me paint you the full picture: Web3 → AI brain drain is real and accelerating.
Talent exodus:
• $SUI core devs Mohamed Baioumy & Alex Cheema → exo Labs (distributed AI compute)
• OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah → OpenRouter (AI model platform)
• FTX Future Fund's Leopold Aschenbrenner & Avital Balwit → OpenAI/Anthropic
• Coinbase/Base marketing, product, dev & data teams → OpenAI, Anthropic
But it's not just people. The infrastructure is flipping too.
Mining → AI compute pivot is brutal:
• CoreWeave: GPU miner turned AI cloud giant
• IREN, TeraWulf, Hut 8, Cipher, Core Scientific, Bitdeer, Crusoe → all building AI clouds, GPU clusters, data centers
• Landing contracts with OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, AWS, Google, AMD
Some sold mining ops entirely. Some still mine but redirect new capital/power to AI. Others dumped $BTC reserves but haven't announced exit.
ASICs can't run AI models, but miners control what AI needs most: power, land, facilities, network, ops expertise. Easy pivot.
People vote with brains. Companies vote with resources. Talent, capital, electricity—all flowing to AI.
The question isn't if crypto talent bleeds into AI. It's whether anything's left to build the next cycle.
Let me paint you the full picture: Web3 → AI brain drain is real and accelerating.
Talent exodus:
• $SUI core devs Mohamed Baioumy & Alex Cheema → exo Labs (distributed AI compute)
• OpenSea co-founder Alex Atallah → OpenRouter (AI model platform)
• FTX Future Fund's Leopold Aschenbrenner & Avital Balwit → OpenAI/Anthropic
• Coinbase/Base marketing, product, dev & data teams → OpenAI, Anthropic
But it's not just people. The infrastructure is flipping too.
Mining → AI compute pivot is brutal:
• CoreWeave: GPU miner turned AI cloud giant
• IREN, TeraWulf, Hut 8, Cipher, Core Scientific, Bitdeer, Crusoe → all building AI clouds, GPU clusters, data centers
• Landing contracts with OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, AWS, Google, AMD
Some sold mining ops entirely. Some still mine but redirect new capital/power to AI. Others dumped $BTC reserves but haven't announced exit.
ASICs can't run AI models, but miners control what AI needs most: power, land, facilities, network, ops expertise. Easy pivot.
People vote with brains. Companies vote with resources. Talent, capital, electricity—all flowing to AI.
The question isn't if crypto talent bleeds into AI. It's whether anything's left to build the next cycle.