Cat Wu, who ran product for Claude Code and Cowork at Anthropic, is joining OpenAI to lead product management for its Core Products group. She announced the move on X at 4:25 PM PT on Wednesday, Nov 4, about 27 hours after she posted that her last day at Anthropic was the previous Friday.
Wu led product for Claude Code. According to Business Insider, Wu "was the product leader for Claude Code and had become one of the blockbuster app's prominent evangelists on social media." Business Insider describes OpenAI's Codex as "a tool similar to Claude Code."
What Wu announced
Wu's announcement on X says: "Some news: I'm joining OpenAI to lead product management for Core Products". She gave three reasons, writing that she has "a lot of respect for OpenAI for showing the world that scaling works, for bringing AI to over a billion people, and for believing great products are core to the mission."
She also described what she plans to build. In her words: "Together, we'll build agents that have your back and your team's, and keep you in control, so you get more time for the people and work you love." She named Tibo Sottiaux (@thsottiaux) as someone she is excited to work with. Sottiaux replied with a quote post: "Welcome Cat. Stoked to be building together soon." Greg Brockman (@gdb) also quote-posted a welcome, writing "welcome @_catwu to the team".
When we checked at about 6:50 PM PT on Nov 4, the announcement showed 8,078 likes and about 860,000 impressions, according to X's own counts.
What OpenAI confirmed
Business Insider reported that OpenAI confirmed Wu is joining the company, and that Anthropic declined to comment on the hire. An OpenAI representative told the outlet that she will work with Nick Turley on enterprise products and Ashley Alexander on consumer products, and will report to Sottiaux.
Neither Wu's post nor Business Insider gives a start date. Wu's post does not say which products Core Products covers beyond the agents she describes, and OpenAI had not published its own announcement in the sources we read.
How she left Anthropic
Wu's first post went up on Tuesday, Nov 3, at 1:33 PM PT. It began: "Friday was my last day at Anthropic." She wrote that two years ago, when Claude Code "was a small internal tool," she asked it to build a reinforcement learning environment: "I steered it for tens of hours but never manually wrote a line of code. It worked, I was hooked, and I joined the team."
She also described how use of the tool changed. In her words: "When we first launched, most people approved every permission prompt by hand and mostly used Claude to answer questions and write tests." Her post continued: "Today, the default is trusting Claude's judgment to auto-approve. Claude does large migrations and builds new products."
Business Insider's report on the departure said Wu did not say what prompted it and that Anthropic confirmed she had left. It described her as one of the two top leaders of Claude Code alongside its creator, Boris Cherny, and said she also oversaw Cowork, Anthropic's tool for non-coding knowledge work. It added that Thariq Shihipar, who also worked on Claude Code, announced his own departure in October.
That exit post drew far more attention than the OpenAI one. At the same check, it showed 15,303 likes and about 3.73 million impressions.
The timing
The departure comes close to Anthropic's planned stock market debut. Business Insider wrote that she is "leaving at a crucial moment for Anthropic, as it churns toward a gargantuan initial public offering later this month." Business Insider reported that Wu wrote on X that she had "no idea" whether leaving would let her sell her shares earlier than remaining employees, and that it "wasn't a factor for me." For background on the offering, see our post on how retail investors may get Anthropic stock.
Business Insider also noted that this is not Wu's first move. She and Cherny left for the AI coding startup Cursor in the summer of 2025 and returned to Anthropic a couple of weeks later, The Information reported at the time, according to Business Insider.
What the hire could mean for Codex
Business Insider wrote that "the hire could help OpenAI's Codex adoption, a priority since it fell behind Anthropic in enterprise sales earlier this year." That is the outlet's analysis, not a statement from OpenAI. OpenAI made two other Codex-related announcements recently: on Nov 4 it announced plans to acquire Pierre, maker of code storage and diff tools, and last week it raised Work and Codex usage on its ChatGPT Pro plans. For a primer on the category, see our explainer on coding agents.
Wu has spoken publicly about where she thinks products are heading. In a TechCrunch interview from May, she said: "I think the next big thing is proactivity." She described a step where "Claude understands what you work on, and just sets up some of these automations for you."
What is not known
Several things are open as of Wednesday evening. We did not find an announcement of who will replace Wu at Anthropic. We did not find a full description of what Core Products includes, or a start date. Wu gave no reason for leaving Anthropic, and Business Insider said she did not say what prompted it. Anthropic declined to comment on the hire.
We will add a dated update if either company publishes a statement.
