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Sui Network CTO Sam Blackshear to leave Mysten Labs for Anthropic

Sui Network CTO Sam Blackshear to leave Mysten Labs for Anthropic

The Move creator said he will remain an adviser to Mysten Labs and Sui developers after joining Anthropic's defensive security research effort, while CEO Evan Cheng takes over technical vision.

SUI

Fact Check
The claim is directly confirmed by the originating source: Sam Blackshear's own verified X post (@b1ackd0g) stating he is leaving Mysten Labs to join Anthropic for defensive security research. The Block's official account corroborates the departure and the detail that CEO Evan Cheng will assume technical vision leadership for Mysten and Sui. BlockBeats and CoinNess provide additional independent corroboration, including the Move creator detail and Blackshear's expected continued involvement. All key claim elements are supported by primary and multiple secondary sources.
Summary

Sui Network chief technology officer Sam Blackshear, the creator of the Move programming language and a co-founder of Mysten Labs, said he is leaving the company to join Anthropic for defensive security research, extending a shift by prominent blockchain engineers into AI-era cybersecurity work. Blackshear said Evan Cheng, Mysten Labs' chief executive, will take over the company's technical vision, while he remains a close adviser to Mysten Labs and to developers across the Sui ecosystem. He also said a Move Foundation is in the works and that he intends to stay involved, though no launch date, governance structure or funding plan has been disclosed. The move comes as Anthropic expands research into AI-enabled cyber threats and defensive applications, including work on software vulnerability discovery, while Mysten has already tied AI and blockchain security into its strategy through a Google Cloud partnership focused on code development and auditing.

Terms & Concepts
  • Move Foundation: A proposed organization Blackshear said is being developed to support the Move programming language's ongoing development and governance.
  • defensive security research: Cybersecurity work aimed at finding and mitigating vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers.
  • layer 1 blockchain: A base blockchain network that processes and validates transactions on its own chain.