Claude Code product lead Catherine Wu joins OpenAI

Catherine Wu, who led product development for Claude Code at Anthropic, is leaving the company to join OpenAI. She will oversee product management for OpenAI’s “Core Products” and work with Thibault Sottiaux, who leads Codex and ChatGPT. Sottiaux welcomed Wu with the one-word remark “CatGPT.”

Wu said she joined Anthropic two years ago, when Claude Code was a small internal tool and users generally approved each permission request themselves. She said the product has since evolved so that users typically trust Claude’s decisions, while the system can handle large migrations and help create new products. Her stated goal at OpenAI is to develop agents that take work off users while allowing them to remain in control.

Growth marketing manager Austin Lau is also moving from Anthropic to OpenAI. Anthropic has additionally lost Thariq Shihipar, who worked on skills and context engineering, and Anthony Morris, a builder of Claude Code Desktop. Neither is reported to have joined OpenAI. The personnel changes reflect competition between the companies over products, pricing, strategy and talent.