OpenAI Co-Founder Jumps To AI Rival Anthropic To ‘Gain New Perspectives’

“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,” said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, regarding his decision to leave for Anthropic.

John Schulman, OpenAI co-founder and a key leader in the creation of ChatGPT, is jumping ship to AI model rival Anthropic in a move to “return to hands-on technical work.”

“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,” said Schulman in a post on X. “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.”

Schulman helped lead the post-training team at OpenAI and fine-tuned the AI models that were deployed in ChatGPT and OpenAI API. He was head of alignment science at OpenAI.

OpenAI is heavily backed by Microsoft, while Anthropic is financially backed by Microsoft’s rival Amazon. Anthropic and OpenAI are two of the hottest AI startup companies in the world thanks to being pioneers in the generative AI market.

Schulman said he’s “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 said.

‘Proud Of What’ We Achieved At OpenAI

Schulman was recruited by OpenAI nearly nine years ago when the company was still being developed.

OpenAI is the only company Schulman has ever worked for prior to joining Anthropic. His new position at Anthropic is unclear. Anthropic did not respond for comment by press time on Schulman’s new role.

“I’m proud of what we’ve all achieved together at OpenAI; building an unusual and unprecedented company with a public benefit mission,” he said, adding that he is “confident” in OpenAI’s future.

“Post-training is in good hands and has a deep bench of amazing talent,” he said. “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in such an important part of history and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together. I’ll still be rooting for you all, even while working elsewhere.”

OpenAI’s President Takes ‘Sabbatical’

Schulman’s departure from OpenAI comes just several months after the company disbanded its Superalignment team that was working to ensure people could control AI systems.

Fellow OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever left the company in May.

Only a small handful of OpenAI’s eleven co-founders remain, including CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman. However, Brockman this month said he was taking a sabbatical for the remainder of 2024.

“I’m taking a sabbatical through end of year,” Brockman said on X. “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.”

CEO Altman, for his part, thanked Schulman for his work at OpenAI.

“Thank you for everything you've done for OpenAI!” Altman said on X. “You are a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about product and society, and mostly, you are a great friend to all of us. We will miss you tremendously and make you proud of this place.”