OpenAI's GPT lead jumps to Anthropic amid subscriber exodus
Max Schwarzer, a top researcher at OpenAI, just left for rival AI company Anthropic. He shared on X that he'll be working on reinforcement learning there.
His move comes right after OpenAI's controversial Pentagon deal sparked privacy worries and around 1.5 million subscribers have reportedly left ChatGPT.
Schwarzer's role at OpenAI and the ethics of AI
Schwarzer played a big role at OpenAI—he led work on key AI models like o1 and o3, delivered several models including GPT-5, 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3-Codex, and helped shape their approach to reasoning and reinforcement learning.
His switch highlights the growing debate over ethics in AI, especially since Anthropic rejected an update to its contract with the Pentagon because of concerns about surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Schwarzer's farewell post
In his goodbye post, Schwarzer gave a shout-out to Anthropic's values and research culture, saying he trusts the team there.
He also thanked @markchen90, @FidjiSimo, @sama and @merettm for all their support, and mentioned @ericmitchellai and @yanndubs as collaborators on post-training work.