Meta quietly hired two more founding members from Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab

The AI landscape is witnessing significant shifts as Thinking Machines Lab, a $12 billion startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, experiences a wave of departures to Meta. Mark Jen and Yinghai Lu, both founding members of the startup, are among those who have transitioned to Meta. Jen, a software engineer with a background at Meta, and Lu, who has experience with Meta and OpenAI, specialize in inference, crucial for enhancing AI chatbot reasoning capabilities. In addition to Jen and Lu, Tianyi Zhang, an AI researcher with a notable publication record, has also joined Meta, although he was not a founding member of the startup. None of the three have publicly updated their LinkedIn profiles to indicate their new roles at Meta, and details about their responsibilities or start dates remain undisclosed as both companies have opted not to comment on the situation. This trio marks the latest in a series of high-profile exits from Thinking Machines Lab, which has gained recognition for its impressive funding, raising $2 billion last year, and its reputation as a hub for AI talent. Notably, Meta has already recruited seven founding team members from the startup, including Joshua Gross, who played a critical role in developing its flagship product, Tinker. Meanwhile, OpenAI has also brought on board Jolene Parish, a founding member and security engineer. The startup is not only losing talent but continues to attract leading figures in AI. Current CTO Soumith Chintala, known for creating the popular open-source AI project PyTorch, left Meta to join Thinking Machines Lab. Additionally, the company has recently added Neal Wu, a talented coder and gold medalist in programming competitions. Despite these challenges, the workforce at Thinking Machines Lab has surged to 130 employees, reflecting its growing influence in the AI sector.