Catherine Wu leaves Anthropic's Claude Code product lead role to join OpenAI's Core Products team

Catherine Wu, who led product for Claude Code at Anthropic, is joining OpenAI to lead product management for its Core Products team. She announced the move on X and said she wants to build AI agents that take work off users' plates while keeping them in control. Wu joined Anthropic two years ago, when Claude Code was a small internal tool and most users approved every permission request by hand; she said the default is now to trust Claude's judgment, with Claude handling large migrations and building new products. Anthropic growth marketing manager Austin Lau is also moving to OpenAI. Separately, Anthropic has recently lost skills and context engineer Thariq Shihipar and Anthony Morris, who built Claude Code Desktop, though neither has joined OpenAI. OpenAI Codex and ChatGPT head Thibault Sottiaux welcomed Wu with the one-word comment "CatGPT." The hire underscores competition between OpenAI and Anthropic across models, pricing, product strategy, and talent.