๐๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ค๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐๐๐ก๐ข๐ง๐๐ฌ ๐ฅ๐จ๐ฌ๐๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ฐ๐จ ๐๐จ-๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐๐๐ซ๐ฌ ๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐ ๐ซ๐๐ก๐ข๐ซ๐๐ฌ ๐ค๐๐ฒ ๐ญ๐๐ฅ๐๐ง๐ญ.
Thinking Machines Lab, the startup led by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, is losing two co-founders and another former OpenAI staffer, all of whom are returning to OpenAI. Murati announced on X on Wednesday that the company had parted ways with co-founder and CTO Barret Zoph and named Soumith Chintala as the new CTO. Murati did not mention any other departures in her post.
Less than an hour later, OpenAI executive Fidji Simo said Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz were heading back to OpenAI and that the move had been in progress for several weeks. Metz is a co-founder of Thinking Machines and previously worked at OpenAI, and Schoenholz also previously worked at OpenAI, with his LinkedIn profile still listing Thinking Machines at the time referenced in the report. Zoph previously served as OpenAI vice president of research and earlier spent six years at Google as a research scientist.
Murati, who was OpenAI CTO until September 2024, left and co-founded Thinking Machines with Zoph and Metz, later raising a 2 billion dollar seed round in July that valued the company at 12 billion dollars, with Andreessen Horowitz leading and participation from Accel, Nvidia, AMD, and Jane Street, among others. Wired reported the split with Zoph was not amicable, while the report notes that co-founder departures less than a year after founding stand out, especially with a CTO leaving alongside another co-founder. The company has also lost co-founder Andrew Tulloch to Meta in October, while OpenAI has seen other high-profile departures in recent years, including John Schulman leaving for Anthropic in August 2024 before later joining Thinking Machines as chief scientist around its launch timing.
