The AI talent war: 46 researcher moves between frontier labs since 2025 — Meta took in 19

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.

46 publicly reported direct moves of researchers and research leaders between eight frontier-model labs — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, SSI, Thinking Machines Lab (TML) and Cohere — from January 2025 through September 2026. Each move is dated by its public announcement month.

2025 Jan–Jul: Meta's inbound wave & TML founding2025 Aug–Dec2026: return waves & DeepMind departures

Meta absorbed 13 researchers in June 2025 alone — eight straight from OpenAI in one announcement wave. reuters.com

Three TML co-founders — Barret Zoph, Luke Metz and Sam Schoenholz — returned to OpenAI together in January 2026; by August all three had moved again. techcrunch.com

Google DeepMind lost six researchers in June 2026 to three destinations, including Nobel laureate John Jumper to Anthropic and Noam Shazeer to OpenAI. fortune.com

Tianfu Fu made four moves in fifteen months — Meta to OpenAI to xAI to Google DeepMind — the most itinerant researcher in the set. linkedin.com

All 46 moves, chronological

Month	Researcher	Left	Joined	Source

Data: 46 vetted, publicly reported direct moves between frontier AI labs, January 2025 – September 2026, compiled from press reports and announcement pages; current through 2026-09-01. "Month" is the public announcement month when a start month is unavailable; founding-team announcements count as moves in their announcement month. Scope excludes policy, sales, investor and pure product roles. Public reporting is incomplete: this is not every confidential personnel move.

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