The AI lab revolving door spins ever faster

The churn across leading AI labs shows no signs of slowing. The latest flashpoint came with the sudden and reportedly tense exit of three senior executives from Thinking Machines Lab, the company led by Mira Murati. OpenAI swiftly hired all three, and more departures appear imminent. According to reporting by Alex Heath, two additional Thinking Machines employees are expected to join OpenAI in the coming weeks.

At the same time, Anthropic continues to recruit heavily from OpenAI’s safety and alignment ranks. The Verge reports that Andrea Vallone, a senior safety research lead at OpenAI, has left to join Anthropic. Vallone’s work focuses on how AI systems respond to mental health–related issues, an especially sensitive area for OpenAI following its recent struggles with overly agreeable, or “sycophantic,” model behaviour. At Anthropic, Vallone will work under Jan Leike, who left OpenAI in 2024 after raising concerns that the company was not prioritising safety sufficiently.

OpenAI also closed out the week with another notable hire. Max Stoiber, formerly Shopify’s director of engineering, is joining the company to work on OpenAI’s long-rumoured operating system. Stoiber described the effort as being led by a “small high-agency team,” underscoring OpenAI’s continued push to attract senior talent from across the tech industry.