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OpenAI loses 3 top executives as it cuts back on ‘side quests’

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OpenAI lost three top executives on Friday.

Kevin Weil, who headed OpenAI’s scientific research efforts after serving as chief product officer, posted on LinkedIn that his team, OpenAI for Science, is being decentralized into other research teams and that he is leaving the company.

Bill Peebles, who headed OpenAI’s AI video app Sora, also announced his departure. Although Peebles didn’t explain why in his post, OpenAI shut down Sora last month due to cost and compute constraints.

“I’m proud of all the sleepless nights before and after the launch this team endured in order to deploy the technology in a responsible way and help steer societal norms,” Peebles wrote.

An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is unifying its business and product strategy. Prism, an AI workplace for scientists that Weil oversaw, is moving to Codex, OpenAI’s AI developer assistant, which is expanding beyond coding.

Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI’s chief technology officer for its B2B applications, is also leaving to spend more time with his family, he wrote on LinkedIn. Narayanan’s departure is unrelated to the other two, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The shakeup comes as OpenAI narrows its focus by cutting back on “side quests” and doubling down on selling to businesses. It’s a move spearheaded by its CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, to make the company profitable as it moves towards an IPO. Simo is on medical leave for several weeks.

OpenAI has been losing some of its thunder to Anthropic, as its latest releases like Claude Code have been gaining traction with businesses and sparking fears of a ‘SaaS-pocalypse.’

Anthropic has seen funding offers valuing it at up to $800 billion, Business Insider reported, more than twice its most recent valuation in February. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in a funding round it announced last month.

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Henry Chandonnet is pictured

The creator of Anthropic’s Claude Code likes to hire engineers who do ‘side quests’ like making kombucha

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Want a job at Anthropic? It might help to get a hobby.

The AI boom is changing the job requirements for an engineer. Not only do they need to have coding skills, but they also must know how to operate vibecoding tools and stay up to date with new AI models.

Anthropic leader Boris Cherny looks for something else: “Side quests.”

“When I hire engineers, this is definitely something I look for,” he said on “The Peterman Pod.”

Cherny’s definition of side quests includes “cool weekend projects,” like someone who’s “really into making kombucha.” It’s a sign that the engineer is curious and interested in other things, he said.

Much of Cherny’s own growth came from his side projects. Cherny is now a key figure at Anthropic. He created Claude Code, a tool that is now popular with engineers across the country.

“These are well-rounded people,” he said. “These are the kind of people I enjoy working with.”

Cherny also said he prefers that his new hires be “generalists.”

He gave the example of an engineer who can code, but is also able to work on product and design. That all-star engineer also seeks out user feedback.

“This is how we recruit for all functions, now,” he said. “Our project managers code, our data scientists code, our user researcher codes a little bit.”

Cherny isn’t alone in pushing for jobs to become more generalist. Figma CEO Dylan Field said in October that AI was causing job titles to merge, resulting in everyone being a “product builder.”

What else is Anthropic looking for? For some time, it monitored whether candidates use AI in their applications.

In May, Business Insider reported that Anthropic asked candidates for certain jobs not to use AI in their written responses so the company could test their “non-AI-assisted communication skills.”

Anthropic changed its policy in July, allowing candidates to seek out assistance from Claude.

For the younger engineers, a job at Anthropic may be hard to come by. In May, CPO Mike Krieger said on “Hard Fork” that he was focused on hiring experienced engineers — and had “some hesitancy” with entry-level workers.

On the podcast, Cherny said that his love of generalists came from his career trajectory. Working at startups since 18, Cherny had to do everything, he said.

“At big companies, you get forced into this particular swim lane,” he said. “It’s just so artificial.”




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