Thinking Machines Lab Employee Rejoins OpenAI Amid Talent Exodus

Another employee at Thinking Machines Lab is leaving to rejoin OpenAI.

It’s the latest in a string of departures from the $12 billion AI startup, which is led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and lately has been the subject of high-profile poaching campaigns from bigger tech companies.

The latest employee to go back to OpenAI is Jolene Parish, who joined Thinking Machines Lab in April last year, according to her LinkedIn profile. She had worked at OpenAI for three years prior. Before that, she worked for 10 years on security at Apple, her profile says.

Other employees rejoined OpenAI last month. Two co-founders, former CTO Barret Zoph and Luke Metz, both left, along with researcher Sam Schoenholz.

Lia Guy, another researcher, also rejoined OpenAI, The Information reported. Another cofounder, Andrew Tulloch, left for Meta late last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.

OpenAI and Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment.

Thinking Machines Lab raised a monster $2 billion funding round last year, valuing the company at $12 billion, spokespeople said at the time. The startup launched its first product, Tinker, last October.

The San Francisco-based company has become known for attracting star-studded talent. It quietly hired Neal Wu, a legendary coder who won three gold medals in an Olympiad for programming, and Soumith Chintala, the creator of the open-source AI project PyTorch at Meta, who is now Thinking Machines Lab’s CTO, Business Insider previously reported.

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