/AI8h ago

Clive Chan, the second hardware hire for OpenAI's custom chip program, leaves to join Anthropic

Chan previously worked on training efficiency at Tesla Dojo.

4557K2291.1K1.2M
#57roon
Gary Marcus
Karina
swyx
Andrew Carr 🤸
Wenhu Chen
Tom Brown
Jesse Mu
Andrew Curran
Clive Chan
elie
Thariq
Beff (e/acc)
Lisan al Gaib
Tim Zaman
Alex Volkov
akbir.
sam mcallister
Original post
Clive Chan@itsclivetime#540inAI

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

1:23 PM · Jun 6, 2026 · 793.4K Views
Sentiment

Some users congratulated OpenAI hardware engineer Clive Chan on joining Anthropic and praised its principles over OpenAI's culture, while others reacted with insults or warned that pursuing in-house chips would prove a massive headache.

Pos
38.2%
Neg
61.8%
155 comments with sentiment.
Cluster Engagement
Posts from X
Most Activity
Most Activity
VIEWS97.1K
Beff (e/acc)@beffjezos

Anthropic would probably not exist if OpenAI had garden leaves

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

6hViews 97.1KLikes 521Bookmarks 65
BOOKMARKS68LIKES776RETWEETS15REPLIES23
roon@tszzl

@beffjezos the sheer dollar quantity of ip leakage from openai has been just tremendous, probably in the trillions. openai truly has been quite open

Beff (e/acc)@beffjezos

Anthropic would probably not exist if OpenAI had garden leaves

3hViews 52.6KLikes 776Bookmarks 68
Clive Chan@itsclivetime

(sadly can't say much about the chip just yet outside of https://openai.com/index/openai-and-broadcom-announce-strategic-collaboration/ - but the blogpost says `targeted to start in the second half of 2026` so keep an eye out for stuff soon!)

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

8hViews 56KLikes 313Bookmarks 50
Lisan al Gaib@scaling01

Every time an Anthropic, OpenAI or Google employee switches labs it goes viral, because it is the most direct signal on who has the mandate

and in the past two years this transfer was mostly in one direction

OpenAI/Google -> Anthropic

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

2hViews 20.1KLikes 273Bookmarks 26
elie@eliebakouch

huge move! very curious if this means anthropic is starting internal chip development?

for context, clive was a very early employee on oai's custom hardware effort and previously working on tesla dojo

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

7hViews 26.5KLikes 211Bookmarks 28
swyx@swyx

one popular theory is that research paper alpha* and lab publishing ~died when researchers realized that instead of fighting with marketing depts they could simply walk out the door and get >$100m for their legally protected tacit knowledge gained

california non-noncompetes have a bigger impact on knowledge spreading than github, arxiv, and huggingface combined

*btw this is a motivator for me to set up @aidotengineer as a product-centric industry conference to complement the paper-centric research conferences

roon@tszzl

@beffjezos the sheer dollar quantity of ip leakage from openai has been just tremendous, probably in the trillions. openai truly has been quite open

3hViews 11.8KLikes 78Bookmarks 21
Gary Marcus@GaryMarcus

anyone who wants to put money into OpenAI’s IPO should think again.

the talent is voting with its feet, and has been for several years.

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

6hViews 11.6KLikes 100Bookmarks 11
Thariq@trq212

@itsclivetime welcome!

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

6hViews 8.5KLikes 95Bookmarks 0
Tim Zaman@timzaman

@itsclivetime I'll miss you, and jealous of our friends at Ant that get to have you around!

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

7hViews 24.4KLikes 63Bookmarks 3
elie@eliebakouch

asking claude about what chip claude will be trained on

elie@eliebakouch

huge move! very curious if this means anthropic is starting internal chip development?

for context, clive was a very early employee on oai's custom hardware effort and previously working on tesla dojo

6hViews 4.1KLikes 15Bookmarks 4
Beff (e/acc)@beffjezos

Nominative determinism strikes again

roon@tszzl

@beffjezos the sheer dollar quantity of ip leakage from openai has been just tremendous, probably in the trillions. openai truly has been quite open

1hViews 3.7KLikes 17Bookmarks 3
Crepe Supreme@crepesupreme

@tszzl @beffjezos The leakage was mostly papers. GPT-3, InstructGPT, RLHF: all published openly. Calling that "leakage" treats the publishing as loss. The value Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral built came from billions in new compute and new research. OpenAI's actual IP is still in-house.

3hViews 1.3KLikes 5Bookmarks 2
sam mcallister@sammcallister

@itsclivetime Welcome!

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

7hViews 2.1KLikes 20Bookmarks 0
Andrew Curran@AndrewCurran_

@itsclivetime Congratulations and good luck in the future.

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

5hViews 2.1KLikes 15Bookmarks 0
elie@eliebakouch

@itsclivetime huge congrats!! curious about what you will do at anthropic 👀

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

7hViews 3.1KLikes 13Bookmarks 0
Scott@scott___ttocs

@tszzl @yacineMTB @beffjezos Are we defining Anthropic as a “leak” now?

2hViews 886Likes 5Bookmarks 1
Andrew Carr 🤸@andrew_n_carr

@itsclivetime an impressive ride! good luck with Ant - let me know how good mythos is on chip design ;)

Clive Chan@itsclivetime

Personal update: I’ve decided to leave OpenAI.

I’m proud to have been part of the custom chip program and grateful to everyone I got to build with and learn from along the way. The density of hardware talent on that team is extraordinary, and I don't think there's a better chip design team anywhere. It's been a wild journey from second hardware hire, 2.4 years ago, to now, and I'm excited to watch these chips become one of the most important engines of AGI.

At the same time, I haven’t been able to shake the pull to climb a new mountain from the bottom again!

I joined @AnthropicAI this week because I was deeply impressed with the team’s talent, values, and ambition, and I'm already energized by the pace and intensity of the past few days. It’s time to build.

8hViews 5.1KLikes 11Bookmarks 0
Adam LAG@Adam_lag_

@itsclivetime An other profile leaving OpenAI for Anthropic! Why?

7hViews 734Likes 3
Clive Chan@itsclivetime

@lotusfracture fixed

3hViews 157Bookmarks 1
Alps@alpaysh

@ns123abc mogged

3hViews 104Likes 4
Load more posts