Anthropic hires Stargate compute veteran from Meta

Anthropic is pairing its $99 billion book of signed data center deals with people who have already delivered multi-gigawatt builds. The latest is Shamez Hemani, who spent nearly two and a half years inside OpenAI's Stargate program and has now joined Anthropic as a member of the technical staff, Data Center Dynamics reports. The move ends a five-month stop at Meta's dedicated compute unit, where Hemani landed in April amid a broader reshuffle of senior OpenAI data center staff.

Hemani was responsible for helping build gigawatts of capacity for OpenAI's research and product teams during his Stargate tenure. Peter Hoeschele, another key Stargate figure, joined Meta's compute unit in the same round and remains there; OpenAI's Anuj Saharan also moved to Meta, The Information reports.

Meta set up the unit in January with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pledging "tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time." Hemani said on LinkedIn that he joined Anthropic "to work on compute and build an exciting and safe future."

The hire lands as this publication has tracked a leadership churn around OpenAI's compute build: OpenAI's data center chief exited in August as its $750 billion buildout churned, and Anthropic is drawing from that same talent pool while it expands its own infrastructure footprint.

Anthropic has signed a $35 billion cloud agreement with Lambda, a $45 billion deal with Nscale, and a $19 billion deal with TeraWulf, Data Center Dynamics reports. The three signed deals total $99 billion in capacity commitments, and Anthropic has formed Theseus Infrastructure with GIC and Macquarie to develop data centers while talking with Meta about leasing compute. Hemani has already built at gigawatt scale, and a contract book does not teach anyone how to commission a substation.