Former OpenAI exec Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is seeing the departure of two co-founders, both returning to openai. Another former OpenAI staffer who joined Thinking Machines is also heading back to the company.
On Wednesday, Murati announced the departure of Barret Zoph, the company’s co-founder and CTO. “We have parted ways with Barret,” Murati posted on X. “soumith Chintala will be the new CTO of Thinking Machines. He is a brilliant and seasoned leader who has made vital contributions to the AI field for over a decade, and he’s been a major contributor to our team. We could not be more excited to have him take on this new duty.”
Murati’s announcement didn’t mention other departures.
Just 58 minutes later, Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, announced Zoph’s return. “Excited to welcome Barret Zoph,Luke Metz,and Sam Schoenholz back to OpenAI! This has been in the works for several weeks,and we’re thrilled to have them join the team,” Simo wrote on X.
Metz is another co-founder of Thinking Machines and previously worked at OpenAI for several years. Schoenholz also worked at OpenAI, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Zoph was previously VP of research at OpenAI and spent six years as a research scientist at Google. Murati, formerly OpenAI’s CTO until September 2024, left to co-found Thinking Machines with Zoph and Metz. The startup has secured significant funding, including a $2 billion seed round last July led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Accel, Nvidia, AMD, and Jane Street, valuing the company at $12 billion.
TechCrunch has reached out to both thinking Machines and OpenAI for comment.Wired reports that the split between Zoph and Thinking Machines wasn’t amicable, a sentiment supported by Murati’s limited public statement regarding his departure.
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While talent movement between AI companies is common, the departure of co-founders from a startup less than a year after its founding is significant. Losing two co-founders, especially the CTO, could be a setback for Thinking Machines, which had assembled a team of researchers from OpenAI, meta, and Mistral AI.
The company has also seen other key departures, including co-founder Andrew Tulloch, who joined Meta in october. OpenAI has also seen co-founders leave for other ventures, such as John Schulman, who went to Anthropic in August 2024 before joining Thinking Machines as Chief Scientist and then leaving again in February of last year.