Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Why Boris Cherny came back to Anthropic from Cursor

24 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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Boris Cherny left Anthropic for Cursor because he loved the product and team, but came back after realizing he missed Anthropic's core mission of AI safety. At Anthropic, every employee can cite safety as their primary purpose. That mission alignment matters more to him than building a cutting-edge product.

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You actually left Anthropic, you joined Cursor, and then 2 weeks later you went back to Anthropic. What happened there? I joined Cursor because I'm a big fan of the product, and honestly, I met the team and I was just really impressed. They saw where AI coding was going, I think, before a lot of people did. So the idea of building a good product was just very exciting for me. I think as soon as I got there, what I really missed about Anthropic was the mission. And the thing that drew me to Anthropic was the mission. And it was, you know, it's all about safety. And when you talk to people at Anthropic, just like you find someone in the hallway, if you ask them why they're here, the answer is always going to be safety. And so this kind of like mission-drivenness just really, really resonated with me. And I just know personally, it's something I need in order to be happy. And I found that, you know, whatever the work might be, no matter how exciting, even if it's building a really cool product, it's just not really a substitute for that.