Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at Google
TechCrunch Lucas Ropek
Barret Zoph left Thinking Machines, went back to OpenAI, and now he's at Google. AI execs are hopping jobs so fast the org chart needs a seatbelt.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Lucas Ropek — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Barret Zoph has turned up at Google as vice president of research, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s the latest stop in a very short tour through the AI elite, and it adds another twist to a year that has already been messy for OpenAI’s talent bench.
Zoph first spent two years at OpenAI, then left in October 2024 to co-found Thinking Machines with Mira Murati, who had departed OpenAI the month before. In January, Zoph and another Thinking Machines co-founder, Luke Metz, left that startup and went back to OpenAI. Zoph’s second run there lasted only five months.
At OpenAI, he was put in charge of AI enterprise sales. He left in June, and now Google says it wants him back because of his RL and post-training expertise for Gemini. That matters because Google is not hiring him as a generic famous name; it is clearly after a very specific skill set.
The broader pattern is the story here. OpenAI, even while preparing for an IPO and sitting at the center of the AI boom, has seen a lot of senior people move on over the past eight months. The departures have included its COO and a top data center executive, which makes the churn look less like a one-off and more like a habit.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is what happens when the AI industry starts treating senior people like borrowed chargers. The loudest labs love to talk about mission, but the real signal is how often the same names keep bouncing between a small club of companies. Google getting a specialist back makes sense; the rest of the industry just looks a bit scrambled.
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