Claude Code product lead Cat Wu joins OpenAI

Cat Wu, who led product for Claude Code at Anthropic, is moving to OpenAI to run product management for its Core Products team, Cat Wu said in a post on X on November 4. OpenAI confirmed the hire. Wu left Anthropic last week, a couple of weeks before Anthropic’s planned IPO.

An OpenAI representative said Wu will work with Nick Turley on enterprise products and Ashley Alexander on consumer products, and will report to Tibo Sottiaux. In her post she credited OpenAI with “showing the world that scaling works” and “bringing AI to over a billion people,” and described the plan as building “agents that have your back and your team’s, and keep you in control.”

At Anthropic, Wu took Claude Code from an internal prototype to a product that strengthened the company’s finances, and she became one of its most visible advocates on social media, Business Insider reports. She also oversaw Cowork, Anthropic’s tool for non-coding work. The outlet says the hire could help adoption of Codex, OpenAI’s counterpart to Claude Code, after OpenAI fell behind Anthropic in enterprise sales earlier this year.

She has left Anthropic for a rival before. In the summer of 2025, Wu and Claude Code creator Boris Cherny joined the AI coding startup Cursor and were back at Anthropic a couple of weeks later, The Information reported at the time. She announced this departure on November 3, a day before naming her new employer.

It also comes after other people left the Claude Code team. In October a farewell post from a team member listed @_catwu among the accounts to follow for more Claude Code content. That account now belongs to OpenAI’s head of product management for Core Products.

On X, Wu wrote that she had “no idea” whether leaving would let her sell her shares earlier than staff who stay, and that it “wasn’t a factor for me.” When someone asked whether she would take time off first, she replied: “post agi!”