OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman Departs, Joins Competitor Anthropic

In some respects, the reasons behind the 2023 coup against Sam Altman at OpenAI might not be straightforward. Now, with several executives and research engineers leaving OpenAI, the company's future prospects seem uncertain.

John Schulman, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, has left the company to join its competitor, Anthropic, which is known for developing the popular artificial intelligence application, Claude.

Additionally, OpenAI has confirmed that after nine years of service, company president Greg Brockman is temporarily stepping down to extend his leave for relaxation and rest. OpenAI also confirmed the departure of product manager Peter Deng, who had worked at Meta, Uber, and Airtable before joining OpenAI last year and has now left the company.

John Schulman stated on his social media that his move to Anthropic was driven by a desire to deepen his focus on AI alignment, ensuring AI operates as intended and to engage more in practical technical work. He also mentioned that OpenAI would continue to thrive even without him.

Previously, AI safety researcher Jan Leike left OpenAI, and Schulman took over as the head of OpenAI's alignment science, also known as the post-training team. Jan Leike had also joined Anthropic before Schulman.

Following Schulman's departure, only three of the original eleven OpenAI co-founders remain: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Wojciech Zaremba, who is in charge of language and code generation.

An OpenAI spokesperson expressed gratitude for John Schulman's contributions as a member of the founding team and his relentless efforts to advance alignment research. His passion and hard work have laid a solid foundation that will inspire and support future innovations at OpenAI and in the broader field.

This situation seems to be quite favorable for Anthropic, as a significant portion of former OpenAI members have left to join Anthropic. Considering the ban on compete agreements in the U.S., these AI researchers are free to move without any restrictions, including joining competitor companies.