Anthropic loses product lead Catherine Wu behind Claude Code to OpenAI

Why it matters

OpenAI has hired Catherine Wu, who led product for Anthropic's Claude Code, to run product management for its Core Products group. The move highlights how the rivalry between the two companies extends beyond model capabilities into pricing, product strategy, and the contest for skilled people. Thibault Sottiaux, who heads Codex and ChatGPT at OpenAI, marked her arrival with a one-word joke: "CatGPT." Wu says her goal is building agents that take work off users' plates while leaving them in control, a philosophy shaped by her time at Anthropic. She recalls joining Anthropic when Claude Code was a small internal tool and users manually approved each permission request, whereas trust in Claude's judgment has since become the default, with the agent handling large migrations and building new products. Her departure is part of a broader drain at Anthropic: growth marketing manager Austin Lau has also joined OpenAI, while engineer Thariq Shihipar and Anthony Morris, who built Claude Code Desktop, have left without landing at OpenAI so far.