OpenAI’s Custom Chips lead Clive Chan leaves, joins Anthropic; says in announcement post: I have not been able to …

OpenAI’s Custom Chip program lead Clive Chan just announced his is leaving Sam Altman’s company to join Anthropic. Chan joined OpenAI in January 2024. As per Chan’s LinkedIn his designation at OpenAI was Member of Technical Staff and it is the same designation that he is joining Anthropic. Chan announced his decision in a ‘Personal update’ on X, formerly Twitter. OpenAI losing its key chip person to its biggest rival is seen as a setback to the company’s custom chip efforts at a time OpenAI is heading to an IPO. Custom ASICs are one of the hottest hardware technologies right now. Custom chips are reportedly growing 44.6% in 2026, 3x faster than merchant GPUs. Google has TPU. Amazon has Trainium. Microsoft has Maia. OpenAI too is building its own, and now the person who is led the program is leaving for Anthropic.