John Schulman is leaving to work on alignment at Anthropic, OpenAI’s chief rival. In a reply post on X, CEO Sam Altman thanked Schulman and said he “laid out a significant fraction of what became OpenAI’s initial strategy.”

In his new job, Schulman will work closely with Jan Leike, another senior leader who recently left OpenAI for Anthropic due to concerns that safety had taken a backseat to business priorities.