Meta took 34 of 59 frontier-lab researcher moves since 2025, most in one June–July hiring wave
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-web scan found 59 researcher moves between frontier AI labs from January 2025 through September 11, 2026, each corroborated by at least two independent web hosts. They cover 56 researchers — Andrew Tulloch, Barret Zoph and Luke Metz each moved twice — with 37 moves in 2025 and 22 in 2026.
Every move on a timeline
One dot per move, placed by month and by the lab joined; colour is the lab left. Hover or tap a dot for the researcher and source count. Dots with a black ring are researchers who moved twice.
The June–July 2025 wave alone put 24 researchers into Meta — 15 from OpenAI, 8 from Google DeepMind, 1 from Anthropic.
herohunt.aiShengjia Zhao's OpenAI-to-Meta move in June 2025 is the most corroborated in the set, reported on 181 independent hosts.
e.vnexpress.netCounterflow followed: by 2026 Meta lost three researchers, two to OpenAI and one to Anthropic, and Thinking Machines lost seven, four of them to OpenAI.
iq.wikiJune 2026 brought a five-move cluster, mostly out of Google DeepMind into Anthropic and OpenAI.
businessinsider.com
Best-effort public-web census of researcher moves between labs described in coverage as building frontier general-purpose foundation models: 59 moves, January 2025 – September 11, 2026, each corroborated by at least two independent web hosts. Month is the reported announcement or start month; where sources varied the modal month was used. "Hosts" counts independent source hosts. Universities, ordinary tech employers, policy, product and recruiting roles, and single-source reports were excluded. Two corroborated rows retain no source URL and are marked accordingly. Not a definitive HR record.