Thinking Machines Lab bled 12 researchers this year, and OpenAI caught the most of them
Asked:
“Who moved between the frontier AI labs this year?”
As of 27 September 2026, public reporting names 35 direct lab-to-lab moves by 32 people among OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta Superintelligence Labs, xAI and Thinking Machines Lab. This is a best-effort census of publicly reported moves — not a claim that every unpublicized departure is captured — drawn from 9 independent news outlets.
Where the talent flowed
Ribbon width = number of people. Left: lab departed. Right: lab joined. Amber ribbons carry the three two-step movers (Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, Andrew Tulloch). Hover a ribbon for the actual names.
Thinking Machines Lab → OpenAI is the single largest corridor: 6 people, four of them in January alone, including Barret Zoph and Luke Metz.
africa.businessinsider.comMeta and Thinking Machines traded five people in each direction — the only two-way corridor of that size in the data.
techcrunch.comGoogle DeepMind lost 6 and hired only 1 back; four of its departures went to Anthropic amid reporting that its internal struggle is handing the AI coding race to rivals.
latimes.comThree people moved twice within the year: Barret Zoph (Thinking Machines → OpenAI → Google DeepMind), Luke Metz (Thinking Machines → OpenAI → Meta) and Andrew Tulloch (Thinking Machines → Meta → Anthropic).
businessinsider.com
Public-record census of direct lab-to-lab moves among six frontier AI labs, compiled 27 Sep 2026: 35 person-moves, 32 people, 9 independent source hosts, no single URL supporting more than 8.6% of rows. Dates are announcement or reporting dates when an exact start date was unavailable. Scope excludes moves to or from Apple, Microsoft, Cursor and startups outside the six-lab set, and people whose prior employer was not another included lab. Highlighted rows mark the three two-step movers.