OpenAI to Meta was the dominant route: 13 of 45 frontier-lab researcher moves since 2025
Asked (summary):
Which AI researchers moved between frontier labs since 2025? For each move, the researcher, the lab they left, where they went, and the month.
The rows cover 45 direct, publicly reported researcher moves between frontier AI labs from January 2025 through September 2026, each corroborated by at least two pages on at least two independent hosts. This is a best-effort census of public reporting, not a closed official universe — quiet or unreported moves may be absent.
Where researchers moved: 45 moves across 19 lab-to-lab routes
Ribbon width is the number of moves on that route. Left: lab departed. Right: lab joined. Hover a ribbon for the researchers behind it.
Moves by month: the mid-2025 surge
Distinct moves announced or reported per month, January 2025 – September 2026.
Findings
July 2025 was the busiest month with 10 moves, including Shengjia Zhao named chief scientist of Meta's superintelligence group —
ainvest.comJune 2025 saw a coordinated OpenAI-to-Meta exodus of seven researchers, including the Vision Transformer trio Beyer, Kolesnikov and Zhai from OpenAI's Zürich office —
aipulse.aigproexcellence.comTraffic ran both ways: 3 researchers returned from Meta to OpenAI and 2 moved from Thinking Machines Lab to OpenAI —
implicator.aiGoogle DeepMind lost 4 researchers each to Microsoft AI and to Anthropic, part of a reported 20+ DeepMind hires by Microsoft for Copilot —
adam.holter.comBest-effort census of publicly reported direct researcher moves between frontier AI labs, 45 rows, January 2025 – September 22, 2026. Each row is one researcher's employer-to-employer move; month is the announcement or reported start month; every move is corroborated by at least 2 pages across at least 2 independent hosts. Lab-brand variants normalized (e.g. Meta Superintelligence Labs to Meta). Advisory roles, investors and moves with an intervening employer were excluded. Context text is abridged in the table for space.