Co-founders of Thinking Machines Barret Zoph and Luke Metz are leaving the brand-new AI lab and joining OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT announced Wednesday. Fidji Simo, CEO of OpenAI Applications, shared the news in a memo to staff this afternoon.
Two stories are already forming about what motivated these departures. The news was first reported on X by technology journalist Kylie Robison, who wrote that Zoph had been fired for “unethical conduct.”
A source close to Thinking Machines claimed that Zoph had shared confidential company information with competitors. WIRED was unable to verify this information with Zoph, who did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
According to Simo’s memo, Zoph told Thinking Machines CEO Mira Murati on Monday that he was considering leaving. He was then fired on Wednesday. Simo went on to write that OpenAI does not share the same concerns about Zoph as Murati.
The staff shakeup is a major victory for OpenAI, which recently lost its Vice President of Research, Jerry Tworek. A third Thinking Machines staff member, Sam Schoenholz, is also joining OpenAI, according to the company’s announcement.
The departures are a big blow for Thinking Machines, who also lost another co-founderAndrew Tulloch, in November when he accepted a new job at Meta. In a post onMurati confirmed Zoph’s departure and said Soumith Chintala would replace him as the startup’s chief technology officer.
Zoph and Metz left OpenAI in late 2024 to launch Thinking Machines with Murati, the former chief technology officer of the maker of ChatGPT. Zoph was previously OpenAI’s Vice President of Post-Learning, where he led teams that made final improvements to AI models before they were deployed in products such as ChatGPT and the OpenAI API. Metz worked at OpenAI for two years during his first stint at the company and contributed to projects such as ChatGPT and the o1 AI reasoning model.
Simo told employees in her memo that Zoph would report directly to her and that Metz and Schoenholz would work under her. The hiring announcement timeline has been accelerated, she said, so they still need to iron out some details about their roles.
Thinking Machines Lab is one of several well-funded AI startups led by former OpenAI researchers, reflecting the incredible appetite among investors to profit from the AI race. Last year, Murati’s startup was the last valued at $12 billionand was recently in talks to raise more $4 billion for a valuation of $50 billion. The startup’s main product today is called Tinker, which allows developers to customize AI models on their own datasets.
