OpenAI Hires at Least Seven Staffers From Coding Startup Cline

OpenAI has recently hired more than a half dozen employees from Cline, a startup that develops an open-source, AI-powered coding assistant, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed.

The hires could help OpenAI accelerate improvements for its Codex coding product, which it sees as a key tool to make its AI more essential to large corporations as it competes with Anthropic’s Claude Code. The hires, which all the employees disclosed in LinkedIn updates this month, also extend a run of new hires by OpenAI from smaller rivals, including Thinking Machines Lab. That’s a reversal from the past couple of years, when a wave of researchers and top staff left the ChatGPT maker to work for rivals.