Verified partial census · not a complete list

22 frontier-lab moves verify, not 50 — and seven of them run from OpenAI to Meta

Named AI researchers who moved directly between frontier general-purpose model labs, January 2025 through 27 August 2026. A live-web extraction substantiated 23 reported records, merged here to 22 distinct researcher-route moves after folding one duplicate origin for Noam Shazeer. The requested 50+ threshold is not substantiated.

Ribbon colour marks when the move happened: Jun 2025 Aug 2025 Jan 2026 Jun 2026 Jul 2026 Aug 2026 One drifting dot = one researcher · hover a ribbon for names

Seven researchers left OpenAI for Meta in June 2025 alone, as Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new Meta AI lab — the widest verified route in the census. decrypt.co

June 2025 is the peak month with 10 verified moves; June 2026 follows with six reported records, one of which is the merged Shazeer duplicate. aifounders.cz

Microsoft AI took four Google DeepMind researchers in July 2026; their move month is inferred from the source's publication date, not directly stated. windowsnews.ai

Luke Metz moved twice: from Thinking Machines Lab to OpenAI in January 2026 ubos.tech, then on to Meta Superintelligence Labs in August 2026. thenextweb.com

Every verified move

Researcher	Left	Joined	Month	Source

Method: a broad live-web scan across 17+15+16 diverse search-query families and thousands of deduplicated pages; exact named employment moves were semantically extracted and restricted to direct moves between organizations operating frontier general-purpose model labs. 23 extracted records, merged to 22 distinct researcher-route moves — the two Noam Shazeer records name the same origin organization (Google Gemini is part of Google DeepMind). Three rows are dated by source publication month rather than a directly stated move month, marked "inferred" in the table. A number in the diagram counts researchers on that route. Coverage through 2026-08-27; this is a verified partial census, not a complete list of moves.

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