Cat Wu, who led the product side of Claude Code at Anthropic, left the company on Friday, she announced on X on Tuesday afternoon, thanking the Claude Code team and its users. As head of product for Claude Code, Wu was one of the two top leaders and evangelists for the technology alongside its original creator, Boris Cherny. Under their leadership, Claude Code became one of the most important products in the AI industry's history, giving Anthropic a viral product that boosted revenues and access to more funding for compute and made it a bigger rival for OpenAI. Wu did not say what prompted her departure and did not immediately respond to requests for comment. She leaves as Anthropic 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. Anthropic released the tool in research preview in February 2025 in a demo video featuring Wu and Cherny. Wu also oversees Cowork, Anthropic's tool for non-coding work.