Austin Lau, who helped build Anthropic's growth function, joins OpenAI; announced the same day as Cat Wu (follow-up)

Announced about an hour and a half after Wu's post

Austin Lau, who helped build Anthropic's "growth" function, responsible for growing the business, said on X on Nov. 4 (Nov. 5 Japan time) that he had recently joined OpenAI. The same day, Cat Wu, who was product lead for Anthropic's AI coding tool "Claude Code," also announced she had joined OpenAI. Lau's post came about an hour and a half after Wu's post.

The post confirms only the move and his role at Anthropic

What his own post confirms is only that he recently joined OpenAI and that he helped build the growth function at Anthropic. The post does not give his title or responsibilities at OpenAI. His start date and his last day at Anthropic are also unconfirmed. He did not explain the reason for the move in the post. No official announcement or comment from OpenAI or Anthropic has been found.

Any connection to Wu's move is also unknown. Wu said she would lead product management for OpenAI's "Core Products," but Lau's post does not name the same organization.

Anthropic featured his work in a January blog post

In an official blog post on Jan. 26, 2026, Anthropic introduced Lau as a growth marketer at the company. According to the post, Lau used Claude Code to build a plugin for the design tool Figma and a system for writing Google Ads copy. Anthropic said the time it took to create one ad went from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. No material in which a third party verified this figure has been found.

Lau's post announcing his move does not mention Claude Code. Whether he was on the same team as the key Claude Code members who have been leaving cannot be confirmed.

Staff moves continue at Anthropic ahead of its IPO

Since late October, key members of the Claude Code team at Anthropic have continued to announce their departures. Thariq Shihipar, who worked on its development, announced his departure on Oct. 23, and Anthony Morris, who built the desktop version, also left with that same day as his last. Wu, the product lead, left on Oct. 30 and announced on Nov. 4 that she had joined OpenAI. BigGo reported that there is no evidence these departures share a common cause.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic's IPO is expected in the week of Nov. 16. In its filing, Anthropic wrote that it "depends heavily" on its co-founders, executives and key engineers. No information could be found that Anthropic has announced replacements for the key members.

At OpenAI, announcements of hires and acquisitions continued into November. On Nov. 3 it announced the hiring of Hazelbaker from Uber, and on Nov. 4 it announced the acquisition of developer tool Pierre.