Meta pulled 19 of 46 tracked frontier-lab researchers — but the flow ran both ways
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 public-reporting ledger of 46 researcher moves between eleven frontier foundation-model labs, January 2025 through August 2026 — 30 moves in 2025 and 16 in 2026, each dated to a reported start month or, failing that, the announcement month.
Where the researchers went, by month
Ribbons run from the lab left (left side) to the lab joined (right side); ribbon colour marks the destination lab, width counts researchers. Hover a lab or ribbon for names.
The OpenAI → Meta corridor is the widest: 12 researchers, 8 of them in June 2025 alone, when Meta stood up its Superintelligence Lab.
geo.tvGoogle DeepMind lost 14 researchers across four rivals — 5 each to Anthropic and Meta — including AlphaFold co-creator John Jumper to Anthropic in June 2026.
tradingview.comTwo repeat movers: Barret Zoph went Thinking Machines → OpenAI in January 2026, then OpenAI → Google DeepMind in June; Luke Metz made the same first hop, then left OpenAI for Meta in August 2026.
tradingview.comCirculation was two-way: OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta each both lost and gained — Meta itself gave up 7 researchers to xAI, OpenAI, Microsoft AI and Anthropic.
businessinsider.comOne reported 2026 move — Ross Nordeen, xAI → Anthropic — has no established month and is excluded from all monthly counts.
readcompute.com
Every retained move, in order
| Month | Researcher | Left | Joined | Role | Source |
|---|
Methods & caveats. This is a ledger of publicly reported moves, not a census of hiring. “Researcher” covers hands-on research scientists, research engineers and technical research leaders; policy staff, investors and data-centre managers are excluded. Months mix reported start dates and announcement dates, and some reports rest on LinkedIn profiles or secondary coverage. Duplicate and misdated extractions from retrospective articles were removed before counting.
Data: 66 candidate rows extracted from public reporting, corrected to 46 defensible moves between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta AI / Meta Superintelligence Labs, xAI, Microsoft AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Safe Superintelligence, ByteDance Seed, Mistral AI and Cohere; window 2025-01 to 2026-08; each row is one person, one lab pair, one month; one undated 2026 move noted separately.