On the eve of Anthropic’s IPO, key employees are leaving one after another? Even Claude Code’s product lead has joined OpenAI!! 🤯🤯
Cat Wu, known in the AI world as “Sister Cat,” announced just two days ago that she was leaving Anthropic—and today she officially announced she’s joining OpenAI to lead product management for a core product team, focusing on AI agents for individuals and teams.
She joined Anthropic in 2024. She was one of the key people who helped turn Claude Code from an internal tool into the AI coding product developers now use everywhere. Later, she also led Claude Cowork, which focuses on non-coding use cases.
Based on Silicon Valley’s typical four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff, she should already have a good chunk of her Anthropic equity vested. Leaving before the IPO probably won’t affect that equity. She gets to benefit from Anthropic’s IPO, then go to OpenAI and get a fresh grant of options—jealous 😭
And she’s not the only one. On the same day, Austin Lau, Anthropic’s fifth marketing hire and the company’s first growth hire, also announced he was joining OpenAI.
With key employees defecting to its biggest competitor one after another on the eve of its IPO, I think there must be some pretty serious management issues inside Anthropic. Otherwise, why would anyone jump ship to a competitor at a time like this??#Anthropic #AI #OpenAI #Claude
Cat Wu, known in the AI world as “Sister Cat,” announced just two days ago that she was leaving Anthropic—and today she officially announced she’s joining OpenAI to lead product management for a core product team, focusing on AI agents for individuals and teams.
She joined Anthropic in 2024. She was one of the key people who helped turn Claude Code from an internal tool into the AI coding product developers now use everywhere. Later, she also led Claude Cowork, which focuses on non-coding use cases.
Based on Silicon Valley’s typical four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff, she should already have a good chunk of her Anthropic equity vested. Leaving before the IPO probably won’t affect that equity. She gets to benefit from Anthropic’s IPO, then go to OpenAI and get a fresh grant of options—jealous 😭
And she’s not the only one. On the same day, Austin Lau, Anthropic’s fifth marketing hire and the company’s first growth hire, also announced he was joining OpenAI.
With key employees defecting to its biggest competitor one after another on the eve of its IPO, I think there must be some pretty serious management issues inside Anthropic. Otherwise, why would anyone jump ship to a competitor at a time like this??#Anthropic #AI #OpenAI #Claude
