OpenAI Rehires Senior Researchers From Mira Murati’s Startup, Underscoring Intensifying AI Talent Battle

New updates have been reported about OpenAI.

OpenAI is pulling key technical talent back from Mira Murati’s well-funded AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, in a move that reinforces its efforts to consolidate top research capabilities amid intensifying competition. OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, announced that Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz are all rejoining the company after a brief stint at Thinking Machines, where Zoph and Metz had served as co-founders alongside former OpenAI CTO Murati. Zoph, who previously served as OpenAI’s VP of research and earlier spent six years as a research scientist at Google, returns with deep institutional knowledge of OpenAI’s research agenda, while Metz and Schoenholz also bring prior OpenAI experience back into the organization. The coordinated return of three senior researchers from a rival startup suggests OpenAI is actively reinforcing its technical bench at a time when model innovation, safety, and productization are increasingly dependent on scarce elite talent.

The departures are a visible setback for Thinking Machines, which raised a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation in July with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Nvidia, AMD, Jane Street, and others, positioning it as a well-capitalized potential challenger to OpenAI. Losing two co-founders, including its CTO, less than a year after launch — and to OpenAI — could slow the startup’s execution and ease near-term competitive pressure on OpenAI in frontier research and applied AI. The reported lack of an amicable split between Zoph and Thinking Machines underscores potential instability inside the rival firm, in contrast to OpenAI’s ability to re-attract former leaders even after high-profile departures such as Murati herself and co-founder John Schulman. For OpenAI, regaining these researchers strengthens its internal pipeline of innovation, reduces brain drain to emerging competitors, and signals to investors, partners, and enterprise customers that the company remains a primary gravity well for top AI scientists despite a broader wave of founder spin-outs across the sector.