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

VIEWS134.3K

Anthropic would probably not exist if OpenAI had garden leaves

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.

9h134.3K66490

BOOKMARKS99LIKES1KRETWEETS20REPLIES29

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

6h83.3K1K99

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.

5h46.2K51853

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.

11h77K37563

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

6h20.7K13146

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.

10h30.2K22933

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.

9h13.5K12412

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.

9h10.9K1150

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.

9h35.3K793

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

4h5.8K334

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

9h4.6K224

sarah guo@saranormous

@tszzl @AdrienLE @beffjezos in the form of staff leaving? or some other vector?

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

1h1K82

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.

9h2.5K200

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.

5h1.3K52

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.

8h2.8K150

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.

10h3.5K140

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.

10h5.5K120

Scott@scott___ttocs

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

5h88651

Sholto Douglas@_sholtodouglas

@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.

2h1.3K80

Tom Brown@NotTomBrown

@itsclivetime Welcome, Clive!

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.

3h1.1K80