Meta pulled 25 researchers in, mostly from OpenAI — then the current reversed toward Anthropic and OpenAI

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.”

69 corroborated candidate move records among frontier AI labs, January 2025 through September 2026, gathered from a broad web scan of public reporting across 40 source hosts — documented public moves, not an exhaustive census and not employer-verified records. Three duplicate edges that would imply an impossible simultaneous path are kept in the table but flagged and excluded from the flow counts.

Where researchers left, and where they landed

Ribbon width = number of moves in the selected window. Hover a ribbon for the names behind it; hover a lab for its ins, outs and net. Colour: purple = flow into Meta’s 2025 hiring wave, orange = flow out of Meta or Thinking Machines, grey = other.

Window:

Moves per month — click a bar to jump the window to that month

The June–July 2025 wave alone accounts for 23 of 69 moves, 20 of them into Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs — 14 from OpenAI and 5 from Google DeepMind. ai-supremacy.com

Thinking Machines Lab is both magnet and revolving door: 8 arrivals (6 straight from OpenAI in February 2025), then 5 departures back to OpenAI and 3 to Meta by mid-2026. pieter.org

Microsoft AI quietly took 7 researchers from Google DeepMind in 2025, several to seed a new Zurich office. cnbc.com

In 2026 the direction flips: Anthropic becomes the top destination (9 of 24 moves that year), including Andrew Tulloch leaving Meta in September 2026. officechai.com

Repeat movers

Six researchers moved more than once in the window; each line is one person’s documented sequence.

Note: two records give John Schulman’s February 2025 origin as OpenAI and as Anthropic; his brief Anthropic stint immediately preceded Thinking Machines, so the Anthropic edge is kept in the sequence and the OpenAI edge is flagged as a duplicate. Ethan Knight’s two August 2025 edges (xAI to Meta, then Meta to OpenAI) are reported as a rapid back-to-back sequence. Barrett Zoph’s and Luke Metz’s August 2026 “from Thinking Machines” edges are stale résumé duplicates of their moves from OpenAI and are flagged.

All 69 records

Click a header to sort. Flagged rows are duplicate edges excluded from the flow chart.

Researcher	Left	Joined	Month	Role / context	Source

Method: 69 candidate researcher-move records (one row per researcher / lab-left / lab-joined / month edge) from a broad scan of public web reporting, January 2025 – September 2026, across 40 source hosts; every edge is corroborated by at least two independent hosts and no single source URL backs more than 7 rows. Counts measure documented direct employer transitions, not compensation or verified HR records; 3 duplicate edges implying impossible simultaneous paths are flagged and excluded from flow totals. Corroborating-page and host counts were cut from the table for space.

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