OpenAI Co-Founder John Schulman quits to join Anthropic
OpenAI's President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman is also taking a sabbatical through the end of the year
John Schulman, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, has left the company to join Amazon-backed rival Anthropic. He made the announcement of his departure on social media platform X.
“I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. I've decided to pursue this goal at Anthropic, where I believe I can gain new perspectives and do research alongside people deeply engaged with the topics I'm most interested in”, he said in a post on X.
“To be clear, I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research at OpenAI. On the contrary, company leaders have been very committed to investing in this area. My decision is a personal one, based on how I want to focus my efforts in the next phase of my career”, he further added.
John Schulman joined OpenAI 9 years ago as part of the founding team. “It's the first and only company where I've ever worked, other than an internship. It's also been quite a lot of fun. I'm grateful to Sam and Greg for recruiting me back at the beginning, and Mira and Bob for putting a lot of faith in me, bringing great opportunities and helping me successfully navigate various challenges. I'm proud of what we've all achieved together at OpenAI; building an unusual and unprecedented company with a public benefit mission”, his post read.
Additionally, OpenAI's President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman is also taking a sabbatical through the end of the year, he said in an X post earlier this week. “I’m taking a sabbatical through the end of the year. First time to relax since co-founding OpenAI 9 years ago. The mission is far from complete; we still have a safe AGI to build”, his X post read.
