OpenAI to Meta was the widest corridor: 15 of 56 frontier-lab researcher moves since 2025
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.”
56 publicly reported, independently corroborated direct moves between frontier AI labs from January 2025 through September 23, 2026 — the full documented set found in live web reporting, each move backed by at least two independent hosts. The busiest stretch was June–July 2025, driven by Meta’s recruitment push.
Where researchers left and where they landed
Ribbon width = number of researchers. Hover a ribbon or lab to focus it; ribbon tooltips list the researchers behind it. "Meta Platforms" and "Meta" are merged as Meta.
Moves by month
Count of reported moves per month, Jan 2025 – Sep 2026 coverage.
Meta hired 23 of the 56 researchers, 15 of them straight from OpenAI in its mid-2025 push — wired.com
Microsoft pulled 6 researchers from Google, largely DeepMind talent for its Zurich lab — windowsnews.ai
Thinking Machines Lab drew 10 researchers in — 5 from OpenAI at its February 2025 launch — but also lost 5 back out, including 3 to OpenAI — cryptopolitan.com
Traffic was not one-way: 2 researchers left Meta for OpenAI within months of the superintelligence-lab hiring wave — link.sherwood.news
All 56 moves
Month
Researcher
Left
Joined
Role
Hosts
Source
Method: 56 publicly reported direct moves between frontier foundation-model labs, Jan 2025 – Sep 23 2026, compiled from live web reporting; each move corroborated by at least two independent hosts (the “hosts” column counts them). Month is the publicly reported hiring month. Policy-only staff, advisory roles, pre-2025 moves and non-frontier employers were excluded; unpublicized moves are not observable. One representative source is linked per row.