Since 2025, 66 reported researcher moves: OpenAI fed Thinking Machines and Meta, then the tide turned back to OpenAI and Anthropic
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.”
The rows cover 66 publicly corroborated researcher moves between frontier AI labs from February 2025 through September 2026, each supported by at least two URLs on two independent hosts. The month is when a move was publicly announced or first reliably reported, not necessarily the start date. This is a conservative, source-corroborated public list, not a census of private or unannounced hiring.
Where researchers went, lab to lab
Ribbon width = number of corroborated moves from the left lab to the right lab. Hover a ribbon for the researchers behind it; hover a lab for its ins and outs.
Moves by month
Reported moves per month, February 2025 – September 2026. Colour marks the destination wave.
The single biggest flow is OpenAI → Meta: 16 researchers, concentrated in June–August 2025 as Meta built its Superintelligence Labs team. techcrunch.com
Google DeepMind lost 10 researchers to Meta in 2025, and a further wave to Anthropic and OpenAI in mid-2026, including Nobel winner John M. Jumper and Noam Shazeer. businessinsider.com
Thinking Machines Lab hired 5 ex-OpenAI researchers at its February 2025 launch, then lost 5 people back to OpenAI — including cofounders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz in January 2026. wired.com
Meta’s raid reversed quickly: 10 departures from Meta Superintelligence Labs appear in the list, with 4 going to OpenAI and 3 to Thinking Machines Lab. businessinsider.com
All 66 corroborated moves
Month
Researcher
Left
Joined
Role at destination
Sources
Link
Curated list of researcher moves between frontier AI labs, 66 rows after corrections (two duplicate-origin rows merged, one unconfirmed move removed, one dropped 2026 move restored), covering 2025-02 through 2026-09; data current through 2026-11-03. Each row required at least two supporting URLs on two independent hosts; counts shown are supporting sources × independent hosts. Month is first public report, not contract start. Source corpora: 4,237 URL results, 1,943 extracted claims before deduplication. Destination roles are shown where reported; unreported roles are left blank.