Breaking: OpenAI's veteran chip expert joins Anthropic

On June 7th, TechSina reported that today, Clive Chan, the so - called "Employee No. 002" of OpenAI's self - developed chip project, posted on the X platform, announcing that he has left OpenAI and officially joined Anthropic this week.

In his resignation statement, Clive Chan recalled his experience at OpenAI over the past two years. He mentioned that he was the second recruited employee of OpenAI's hardware team and witnessed the entire process of OpenAI's self - developed chip project from its early establishment to its current progressive advancement. He evaluated that OpenAI's chip team has an incredibly high density of talent, and he doesn't think there is a better chip design team in the world.

Regarding the future, he is very eager to see these chips grow into one of the most important engines for AGI.

However, Clive Chan also wrote that he has always been unable to shake off the impulse to "climb a new mountain from the bottom again". For this reason, he finally chose to join Anthropic.

He mentioned that the talent, values, and ambition of the Anthropic team impressed him deeply. In just a few days after joining, he has felt an extremely intense work rhythm and said, "It’s time to build."

After announcing his departure, Clive Chan was also questioned by netizens about the latest progress of OpenAI's self - developed chip project. He responded that currently, apart from the information publicly disclosed by OpenAI, he cannot reveal more details.

However, he specifically mentioned the cooperation blog previously released by OpenAI and Broadcom. According to the information disclosed in the blog, the relevant deployment plan is targeted to start in the second half of 2026. Clive Chan also mentioned that the public will soon see more relevant progress.

This blog was published in October 2025. At that time, OpenAI and Broadcom announced a strategic cooperation to jointly build an OpenAI self - developed AI accelerator system with a total scale of 10GW. OpenAI is responsible for chip and system design, while Broadcom is responsible for the development and deployment of the accelerator and network system. The first batch of racks is planned to be delivered in the second half of 2026, and the entire project is expected to last until the end of 2029. This is also the first time OpenAI has officially disclosed a clear timeline for its self - developed AI chip project.

Looking closely at Clive Chan's resume, he has worked or interned at several well - known companies such as OpenAI, Tesla, Google, and SpaceX and has long been engaged in work related to AI infrastructure.

Clive Chan graduated from the University of Waterloo in Canada in 2021. During his time at the University of Waterloo, he also participated in the construction of student organizations related to the Canadian Hyperloop and served as the co - founder and advisor of the Canadian Hyperloop Conference.

Before and after graduation, he interned or worked at Google, SpaceX, and the quantum computing company QuEra. During his time at Google, he was engaged in work related to machine learning infrastructure, and at SpaceX, he participated in projects related to liquid rocket engines.

After graduation, he joined Tesla's Autopilot deep - learning infrastructure team. In nearly three years, he successively served as a Software Engineer and a Senior Software Engineer, responsible for GPU optimization, cluster scheduling, data - center software, and training infrastructure.

In January 2024, Clive Chan officially joined OpenAI, serving as a member of the technical team, responsible for matrix multiplication (Matmul), performance analysis (Roofline Analysis), and hardware - related work, and participated in the construction of OpenAI's self - developed AI chip project.

After Clive Chan announced his joining of Anthropic, Tony CW Liu, an Anthropic employee responsible for GPU performance optimization, quickly appeared in the comment section and left a message: "Congrats and welcome!"

Meanwhile, this job - hopping also triggered a lot of banter from netizens. Some netizens said, "Now every time I see 'I've decided to leave OpenAI', I know the next sentence will definitely mention Anthropic."

Some other netizens made an analogy with football transfers: "It's like leaving Real Madrid to join Barcelona."

Another netizen had doubts about the "climbing a new mountain from the bottom" in Clive Chan's resignation statement. Anthropic's current valuation is almost one trillion US dollars. How can it still be considered starting from the bottom?

On June 1st, Anthropic announced the completion of a Series H financing of up to 65 billion US dollars (approximately 439.77 billion RMB). Its post - investment valuation reached 965 billion US dollars (approximately 65.3 trillion RMB), just one step away from the trillion - dollar club.

Conclusion: The talent flow between OpenAI and Anthropic continues

Now it seems that Anthropic has become one of the most important destinations for OpenAI's talent. From researchers, product leaders to chip engineers, the talent flow between the two companies has always attracted much attention.

In May this year, Andrej Karpathy, a co - founder of OpenAI and a well - known AI researcher, announced his joining of Anthropic, which sparked hot discussions in the industry. One month later, Clive Chan, who participated in OpenAI's self - developed chip project, also chose to join this former "competitor".

For cutting - edge AI companies, talent is always one of the most core assets. For Anthropic, which is continuously expanding its team, this list may continue to grow.

This article is from the WeChat official account "TechSina" (ID: zhidxcom). Author: Jiang Yu. Reposted by 36Kr with authorization.