OpenAI is the biggest talent donor: 53 of 171 reported frontier-lab moves since 2025 start there, and Meta the biggest magnet

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 live-web scan through 19 September 2026 surfaced 171 distinct publicly reported researcher–origin–destination–month move records from January 2025 through September 2026, drawn from 33 source hosts. This is a census of public reports, not a complete HR roster; rumored or pending moves were excluded, and a researcher who moved more than once appears in multiple rows.

Where the talent flowed

Click a month bar to filter to that month; click again to clear. Hover a ribbon to see the researchers behind it. Flows of one move are grouped as “other corridors” when the view is unfiltered.

Meta’s hiring spree peaked in June–July 2025: 59 of the 171 reported moves fall in those two months, most of them into Meta and its Superintelligence Labs. select.keenable.ai

The single widest corridor is OpenAI → Meta: 20 moves, plus 13 more explicitly into Meta Superintelligence Labs. reuters.com

The flow reversed in 2026: 14 reported moves go from Thinking Machines Lab back to OpenAI, the second-largest corridor overall. techpivo.com

44 researchers appear in more than one row; Barret Zoph leads with 9 reported move records across OpenAI, Thinking Machines Lab, Meta and Google. businessinsider.com

All 171 reported moves

Month	Researcher	Lab left	Lab joined	Sources	Source

Method: 171 publicly reported researcher moves between frontier AI labs (organizations developing frontier general-purpose foundation models, including newly founded ones), January 2025 – September 2026, gathered from a live-web scan completed 19 September 2026 across 33 source hosts; no single URL supports more than 8 rows. Each row records a researcher, the lab left, the lab joined, and the month the move occurred or was announced. Rumored or pending moves excluded. Counts measure public reports, not verified employment records; the set is not a complete roster and implies nothing about compensation or causes. Sankey shows corridors with 2+ moves unfiltered; single moves are folded into “other corridors”.

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