Catherine Wu is leaving Anthropic for OpenAI, where she will run product management for “Core Products.” Wu led product for Claude Code, making her move a notable shift in a contest between the companies that extends beyond their AI models to products, pricing, strategy and hiring.
From Claude Code to OpenAI’s core products
Wu described joining Anthropic two years ago, when Claude Code was still a small internal tool. At that point, she said, most users approved every permission request by hand. She now describes a different pattern: users trust Claude’s judgment by default, and the tool handles large migrations and builds new products.
That account points to how the role of a coding assistant can change as users rely on it for more involved work. Instead of reviewing each request, users may delegate larger tasks and focus on the result. Wu says her goal is to build agents that take work off users’ plates while keeping them in control.
More Anthropic staff are moving
Wu is not the only Anthropic employee named in the report as moving to OpenAI. Growth marketing manager Austin Lau is also making the move. Together, the hires span product leadership and growth marketing.
The report also names two other recent Anthropic departures: skills and context engineer Thariq Shihipar and Anthony Morris, who built Claude Code Desktop. Neither has gone to OpenAI, at least not yet, according to the report. The distinction matters: the article describes departures from Anthropic, but does not identify those two as OpenAI hires.
A competition over products and people
Wu’s new remit is product management for “Core Products,” while her previous work centered on Claude Code. Her experience building and shaping a product used to delegate coding work could inform how she approaches the new role, though the report does not specify what she will build at OpenAI.
OpenAI’s Thibault Sottiaux, who leads Codex and ChatGPT, welcomed Wu with the one-word quip “CatGPT.” The line nods to her arrival, while the hiring itself reflects a more consequential contest: companies competing for people who have helped turn AI capabilities into products users can put to work.
In Wu’s description, the central design challenge is balancing delegation with user control. An agent that takes on more work can save effort, but people still need to feel in charge of what it does. Her stated focus on that balance connects her past work on Claude Code with the broader product role she is taking on at OpenAI.
What the move signals
The reported changes show competition playing out across several fronts. Hiring is one; product strategy and pricing are also part of the rivalry described in the article. Staff moves do not, by themselves, establish how either company’s products will change, but they show that experience building those products is a sought-after asset.
Wu’s transition is especially visible because she worked on Claude Code as it evolved from a small internal tool into a system that, in her account, users trust with larger tasks. At OpenAI, she will oversee product management for “Core Products.” What that means for specific products remains unstated, but her move places a leader with Claude Code experience inside a direct competitor.