OpenAI fed Meta's 2025 hiring wave; in 2026 the flow turned toward Anthropic

Asked:

“Track researcher moves between frontier labs — who left where, when — with a source on every move.”

42 publicly reported moves by 39 technical researchers, engineers, founders and research leaders across 14 lab-to-lab routes, from October 2024 through September 2026, each with its own linked source from one of 17 independent news hosts. This is a best-effort scan of public reporting through 2026-09-16 — not a complete census, since labs do not disclose every personnel change.

Where 42 reported moves went

Ribbon width = reported moves on that route (identical routes counted once, using the precomputed route total). Left: lab left. Right: lab joined. Hover a ribbon for the people behind it; hover a lab to isolate its flows.

Meta absorbed 17 of the 42 reported moves — 14 of them in 2025 alone — with the single busiest route being OpenAI → Meta at 9 moves. reuters.com

The tide shifted in 2026: 9 of Anthropic’s 10 reported arrivals are dated 2026, including Nobel laureate John M. Jumper leaving Google DeepMind. webpronews.com

Three people moved twice in the window: Andrew Tulloch (Thinking Machines Lab → Meta → Anthropic), Barrett Zoph (Thinking Machines Lab → OpenAI → Google DeepMind) and Tim Brooks (OpenAI → Google DeepMind → Meta). timesofindia.indiatimes.com

OpenAI is the biggest reported source of talent (17 departures) yet also took in 8 people, including pulling co-founders back from Thinking Machines Lab. digit.in

Every reported move, newest first

Reported	Person	From	To	Role or context	Source

Date caveat. “Reported” is the move or announcement date stated by the source where available (37 rows); otherwise the article publication date is used and flagged under the date (5 rows). Reporting sometimes covers an older move in a later article, so treat this as a reported-date tracker, not an employment record — the linked source is the authority, and exact start dates are not implied.

Public-news scan of reported researcher moves between frontier AI labs: 42 move rows, 39 people, 14 routes, 17 source hosts; coverage 2024-10-03 to 2026-09-11, collected through 2026-09-16. Each row is one reported person/from-lab/to-lab move with its own source URL; no single URL supports more than 4 rows. Counts measure reported moves, not verified employment records; source titles trimmed for space.

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