Cat Wu, a face of the blockbuster app Claude Code, leaves Anthropic

Cat Wu, a face of the blockbuster app Claude Code, leaves Anthropic Cat Wu, who led the product side of Claude Code at Anthropic, has left the AI startup. Don Feria/AP Content Services for Anthropic Cat Wu, a top product manager at Anthropic and one of a small group behind the launch of its blockbuster tool Claude Code, left the company on Friday.Wu announced her departure on Tuesday afternoon on X, thanking the Claude Code team and its users and reflecting on the tool's progress. As the head of product for Claude Code, Wu served as one of the two top leaders and evangelists for the technology alongside its original creator, Boris Cherny.Claude Code, under Wu and Cherny's leadership, turned into one of the most important products in the AI industry's history. The tech gave Anthropic the viral product it needed to boost its revenues and access more funding for compute, and it turned the company into a bigger rival for OpenAI.Wu did not say what prompted her departure and did not immediately respond to requests for comment. She's leaving at a crucial moment for Anthropic, as it churns toward a gargantuan initial public offering later this month. The company confirmed her departure. Thariq Shihipar, who also worked on Claude Code, announced his own departure last month.Wu joined Anthropic in summer 2024 and tested an early prototype of Claude Code. In Tuesday's post, she reminisced on that moment: "It worked, I was hooked, and I joined the team."Anthropic released the tool in research preview in February 2025, announcing it in a brief demo video that featured Wu and Cherny.The two decamped to AI coding startup Cursor that summer, and then returned to Anthropic a couple of weeks later, The Information reported.Wu and Cherny then oversaw Claude Code's meteoric rise, which ramped up at the end of 2025. The tool first grew popular as an automatic coder for software engineers, who suddenly had a product that could sprint through entire coding tasks. Tech giants' AI bills with Anthropic soared as more developers started burning through Claude tokens.Wu also oversees Cowork, Anthropic's tool for non-coding work, which relies on the same AI models and handles knowledge work for non-software engineers. In an interview on Lenny's Podcast in April, Wu described her role as figuring out the path to bring Claude Code to the "AGI-pilled" version that Cherny envisioned for the future — a reference to the industry term "artificial general intelligence."In her role, Wu said she worked with marketing, sales, finance, and other teams, and hired some of Anthropic's product managers. She also regularly responded to user requests about Claude Code on social media.One commenter wrote under her X post on Tuesday, "Are you gonna take that 6 months vacations now?"Wu answered: "post agi!"Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at scouncil@businessinsider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a non-work WiFi network, and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Stephen is a senior tech reporter at Business Insider, covering OpenAI, Anthropic and the ecosystem around the leading artificial intelligence companies.Previously he covered technology at SFGATE, and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Information and CNBC. He studied journalism and economics at Northwestern University.His work has earned an SF Press Club Investigative Reporting Award and, in 2025, SPJ NorCal’s Excellence in Journalism Award for Technology Reporting.Stephen lives in San Francisco. Contact him via email at scouncil@businessinsider.com, or on Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. AI Tech Anthropic More