Claude Code engineer Thariq Shihipar leaves Anthropic after more than a year

Thariq Shihipar, one of the most visible engineers on Anthropic's Claude Code team, announced on 24 October that he has left the company after more than a year working on the coding agent and "seeing it scale larger than I ever imagined". He said he plans to take "a bit of a break before diving into something new" and did not name a next role.

Shihipar praised his former colleagues as "the most talented, thoughtful, competent, and earnest people I have ever met" and pointed developers to Boris Cherny, Cat Wu, Addy Osmani, Lydia Hallie and the @ClaudeDevs account for future Claude Code updates. The post drew more than 4 million views. His X bio now reads "formerly Claude Code @anthropicai". The same week, Anthony Morris, who built Claude Code on desktop, posted that 23 October was his last day at Anthropic. Anthropic has not commented on either departure.

Before Anthropic, Shihipar was a Y Combinator founder and an MIT Media Lab researcher. Claude Code passed $2.5 billion in run-rate revenue in February 2026, according to Anthropic.

Sources: Thariq Shihipar on X, TokenPost, Runtime Wire