AI talent battle intensifies as OpenAI's second hardware hire jumps to Anthropic

1 min read Updated on 10 Jun 2026, 12:03 AM

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Radhika SScanX News Team

AI Summary

Clive Chan, a prominent technical staff member at OpenAI, has defected to rival Anthropic, marking a significant shift in the AI talent landscape. Chan, who was OpenAI's second hardware hire, will focus on hardware efficiency metrics at his new firm. This departure follows a series of high-profile exits from OpenAI to Anthropic, including co-founder Andrej Karpathy and former head of alignment Jan Leike. The talent migration coincides with Anthropic's rise as the world's most valuable startup after a $65 billion funding round.

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OpenAI technical staff member Clive Chan has joined rival Anthropic, intensifying the competition for specialized talent in the artificial intelligence hardware sector. Chan announced his departure from OpenAI via a post on X, expressing pride in his contributions to the custom chip program. He noted that his journey spanned 2.4 years, starting as the company's second hardware hire, and highlighted the potential of these chips to become key engines for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

According to his LinkedIn profile, Chan served as a member of the technical staff at OpenAI for just over two years. Before his tenure at OpenAI, he worked as a software engineer at Tesla for more than two years. At Anthropic, he has assumed the role of technical staff member, with a specific focus on Perplexity per Picojoule, a foundational metric used to gauge AI hardware efficiency.

Chan cited his admiration for Anthropic's talent, values, and ambition as reasons for the move. He described the pace and intensity of the recent transition as energizing, signaling his readiness to continue building in the new environment. This hiring is part of a broader trend of personnel movement between the two organizations.

In recent months, Anthropic has recruited several high-profile figures from OpenAI. Last month, the company hired Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and former director of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision at Tesla. An Anthropic spokesperson indicated that Karpathy is expected to establish a new team dedicated to using Claude to accelerate pre-training research. Other notable defectors include Jan Leike, OpenAI's former head of alignment, who moved in May 2024, and co-founder John Schulman, who followed in August.

The talent shifts occur alongside significant financial developments for Anthropic. The company recently surpassed OpenAI to become the world's most valuable startup following a $65 billion Series H funding round, which valued the firm at $965 billion. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. Additionally, Anthropic has expanded its safeguards group by hiring Dlshad Othman, a former threat intelligence specialist from Amazon Web Services (AWS), who will address influence operations, surveillance, and cyber threat investigations.