“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.”
Through 2026-09-15, public sources document 32 direct moves by 30 researchers between organizations building frontier general-purpose AI models — research scientists, research engineers, technical research leaders, model-policy researchers and founders. Barret Zoph and Luke Metz each moved twice. June was the busiest month, driven by Google DeepMind departures to Anthropic and OpenAI. This is a documented public-source census, not an HR-system census: private or unannounced moves may be missing.
| Researcher | Left | Joined | Role or research area | Source |
|---|
Method: documented public-source census of direct employer-to-employer moves in 2026 (Jan 1 – Sep 15) between frontier general-purpose AI model developers; 32 moves by 30 researchers. Scope covers research scientists, research engineers, technical research leaders, model-policy researchers and founders; security, infrastructure and business executives, moves predating 2026, and non-frontier prior employers (e.g. Apple, Eureka Labs) are excluded. Main-table rows required at least two distinct source URLs across independent hosts; a few supplementary rows rest on a single source and are marked lower confidence. Two adjudicated moves (Matt Botvinick, Liliang Ren) carry no linkable source. Lab names are canonicalized (Meta AI → Meta Superintelligence Labs; Google → Google DeepMind). Each row shows one representative source link; most moves have several.