Meta pulled 13 researchers straight out of OpenAI as 29 verified moves reshaped frontier AI labs

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 conservative, source-verified scan found 29 direct researcher moves between frontier AI labs announced or reported from January 2025 through 7 September 2026 — 21 in 2025 and 8 in 2026. Every move is backed by a source URL; the count covers documented moves only, not undisclosed personnel changes.

Where researchers left, and where they landed

Moves per month

Findings

The surge peaked in June–July 2025: 19 of the 29 moves, most feeding Meta's superintelligence push — including four OpenAI researchers hired in one week. reuters.com

2026 flipped the flow: Google DeepMind lost Nobel-winning AlphaFold lead John Jumper and two more Gemini researchers to Anthropic in June 2026. businessinsider.com

Meta was not only a magnet: it lost four researchers, including two to Thinking Machines Lab, whose Lilian Weng in turn flipped to OpenAI in July 2026. techcrunch.com

OpenAI recruited back too, taking two high-ranking engineers from xAI in July 2025 and Noam Shazeer from Google DeepMind in June 2026. markets.businessinsider.com

Every verified move

Month	Researcher	Left	Joined	Pages	Hosts	Source

Method: live-web research conducted 2026-09-07 across broad searches and established news and technology sources; 29 rows, one per verified direct researcher move between frontier labs, 2025-01 through 2026-09. Month is the month the move was reported or announced, or the stated move month when given. Supporting pages/hosts count independent corroboration per move; some moves rest on a single page. Excluded: corporate/product executives, advisers, rumors, historical affiliations, and moves involving Apple, Scale AI, universities, or non-frontier startups.

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