Anthropic loses product lead Catherine Wu behind Claude Code to OpenAI
Anthropic loses product lead Catherine Wu behind Claude Code to OpenAI
OpenAI poaches Catherine Wu, a former joint developer of Claude Code who left Anthropic, to take on the role of Head of Product Management for its core product, highlighting the intense competition between OpenAI and Anthropic in models, pricing, product strategy, and talent acquisition. Wu, who led the development of Claude Code, expressed her hope to build an intelligent agent that can reduce user burdens while maintaining user control, and mentioned the journey of Claude Code from an internal tool to a product capable of autonomously handling large-scale migrations and developing new products.
Same story2 other outlets also reported this
- 36Kr · AI··First
Former Claude Code product lead Cat Wu joins OpenAI as a core product management lead
- ITHome · AI··+1 h 11 min
Former Anthropic Claude Code product lead Cat Wu joined OpenAI as a core product management lead
- The Decoder··+9 h 46 min·Reading now
OpenAI poaches Anthropic's product head Catherine Wu, taking over product management for Claude Code
Adds:The Decoder mentions the intense competition between OpenAI and Anthropic in models, pricing, product strategy, and talent acquisition.
In order of publication · later reports are added as they appear · Compared by AI from each outlet’s title and summary
OpenAI poaches a Claude Code co-developer from Anthropic. Catherine Wu, who led product for Claude Code at Anthropic, is joining OpenAI to run product management for "Core Products," a hire that underscores the fierce competition between the two companies, which plays out not just at the model level but across pricing, product strategy, and talent. Codex and ChatGPT head Thibault Sottiaux welcomed her with a one-word quip: "CatGPT."
Wu says she wants to build agents that take work off users' plates while keeping them in control. By her own account, she joined Anthropic two years ago, when Claude Code was still a small internal tool and most users approved every permission request by hand. Today, the default is to trust Claude's judgment, and Claude handles large migrations and builds new products, Wu says.
Growth marketing manager Austin Lau is also moving from Anthropic to OpenAI. Beyond those two, Anthropic has recently lost skills and context engineer Thariq Shihipar and Anthony Morris, who built Claude Code Desktop, though neither has gone to OpenAI, at least not yet.
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Source: The Decoder · the-decoder.com