Twenty researchers switched frontier AI labs in 2026, and June's five-person DeepMind outflow was the biggest shock
Asked:
“Who moved between the frontier AI labs this year? For each move list the researcher, the lab they left, where they went and the month.”
Twenty distinct, publicly reported researcher moves between frontier general-purpose AI labs — OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta and Thinking Machines Lab — from January through September 11, 2026. Each leg counts once, so Barret Zoph and Luke Metz each appear twice. This is a best-effort census of publicly reported moves, not private hiring.
Where the talent flowed
Ribbon width = number of moves. Ribbons touching Google DeepMind are drawn in blue; hover a ribbon or lab for the names behind it. Filter buttons show one month at a time.
June was the busiest month: five departures from Google DeepMind, four to Anthropic — including AlphaFold's John M. Jumper — and Noam Shazeer to OpenAI. dlvr.it
Barret Zoph moved twice: back to OpenAI from Thinking Machines Lab in January, then to Google DeepMind as vice president of research in August. techbytes.app
Thinking Machines Lab lost four researchers to OpenAI — three co-founders in January and Lilian Weng in July — while recruiting two from Meta in April. news-factory.app
Andrew Tulloch's Meta → Anthropic move in September is the latest in the window, joining to work on training and inference. nairavoice.com.ng
All 20 moves, in order
Month
Researcher
Left
Joined
Role
Sources
Source
Best-effort census of publicly reported moves of hands-on researchers and technical research leaders between frontier general-purpose AI labs, January 1 – September 11, 2026. 20 moves shown; each leg of a multi-move counted separately; month is the month the move was publicly reported. "Sources" is the count of corroborating articles found — some moves rest on secondary reporting, so judge by the linked source. Three extraction artifacts (a stale prior employer, a collapsed two-leg move, and an unconfirmed joining month) were removed. Private or unannounced hiring is not covered.