85 reported researcher moves since 2025: a June–August 2025 surge into Meta, then 2026 departures from Google and DeepMind toward Anthropic and OpenAI
Asked:
“Which AI researchers moved between frontier labs since 2025? For each move list the researcher, the lab they left, where they went and the month.”
A live-web scan surfaced 85 reported researcher-move records between frontier AI labs from February 2025 through September 2026, backed by 17 independent source hosts, with no single page backing more than six records. It is a broad, source-linked inventory, not a provably exhaustive census: labs publish no rosters, 35 of the 85 moves rest on a single credible source, and the month is the publicly reported one when an exact start date was unavailable.
Who left which lab for which, month by month
Each dot is a month on one origin → destination route; dot size and number = reported moves that month. Meta, Meta AI and Meta Superintelligence Labs are grouped as “Meta”, Google / Google DeepMind / Google Research as “Google”; the table keeps the source wording. Colour = destination. Hover or tap a dot for names.
June–August 2025 alone holds 37 of the 85 moves, 25 of them into the Meta group — mostly from OpenAI and Google DeepMind — as Meta assembled its Superintelligence Labs team. reuters.com
OpenAI is the biggest origin, with 37 reported departures, including the February 2025 founding cluster of eight that followed Mira Murati to Thinking Machines Lab. techcrunch.com
In 2026 the flow turned: Thinking Machines Lab lost Barret Zoph and others back to OpenAI in January, and June 2026 brought a cluster of Google and DeepMind departures to Anthropic and OpenAI. fortune.com
Nine researchers appear in more than one row — mostly legitimate serial moves, like Andrew Tulloch (OpenAI → Thinking Machines → Meta → Anthropic); eight rows where the same apparent event recurs under adjacent months or lab-name variants are flagged as potential duplicates, not deleted. businessinsider.com
Every reported move
Filtered by the controls above. Rows with one source are marked lower confidence; rows that may repeat an adjacent record are flagged as potential duplicates.
Researcher
Left
Joined
Month
Role / context
Sources
Link
Method: live-web scan of reported researcher moves between frontier AI labs, 85 rows covering 2025-02 to 2026-09, compiled Oct 2026 from 17 independent source hosts; no single URL backs more than six rows. “Sources” counts independently retrieved pages supporting a move; month is the publicly reported or announced month when an exact start was unavailable. Business-only, policy and hardware moves excluded. Potential duplicate events are flagged, not removed.