Crypto Talent Drains as AI Sector Lures Top Tech Minds

Sam Blackshear, the creator of Move language, has joined Anthropic, leaving his role as co-founder and CTO at Mysten Labs. Move is the underlying programming language for the Sui chain.

This move marks a significant departure from the crypto industry, where many top talent are joining the AI sector. Blackshear's expertise in designing a new programming language for Meta's Libra project in 2018 has been crucial to the development of Move and Sui.

The trend of top tech people leaving crypto projects for AI is becoming more pronounced. Tomasz Stańczak, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, resigned earlier this year, citing the impact of agentic systems and AI-assisted discovery on the world.

Around 75% fewer code commits were made by crypto projects on GitHub in March this year compared to the start of 2025. Weekly active developers dropped from about 8,700 to 4,600, a cut of more than half.