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Meta Poaches Fifth Founding Engineer from Ex-OpenAI CTO’s Lab in Brutal Talent War
In the latest stunning blow to Mira Murati’s ambitious post-OpenAI venture, Meta has successfully recruited Joshua Gross, a founding engineer at Thinking Machines Lab, marking the fifth key departure from the startup’s original core team.
Gross, who previously held roles at OpenAI and Apple, has joined Meta’s Superintelligence Labs in an engineering leadership position, according to updates on his LinkedIn and GitHub profiles. The move, reported 12 hours ago, underscores Meta’s relentless and highly effective campaign to dismantle one of the most promising new AI labs on the scene.
A Devastating Exodus That Keeps Growing
This is no longer a trickle — it’s a full-blown talent drain:
- In October 2025, co-founder Andrew Tulloch jumped ship to Meta with a reported compensation package worth up to $1.5 billion over six years.
- By February 2026, two more founding members — Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak — had quietly followed.
- Now, with Joshua Gross’s departure, Meta has secured five of Thinking Machines Lab’s original founding team members.
Adding to the drama, several other key researchers, including co-founders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz, along with researcher Sam Schoenholz, left earlier this year — but they returned to OpenAI instead. That departure was reportedly triggered by Murati firing Zoph over alleged “unethical conduct,” a claim OpenAI’s leadership publicly downplayed.
Meta’s Aggressive Playbook: From Acquisition Attempt to Serial Poaching
Meta’s strategy has been ruthless and methodical. According to Wired, the company approached more than a dozen employees at the roughly 50-person startup with eye-watering offers reaching into the hundreds of millions. When Murati rejected Zuckerberg’s outright acquisition attempt, Meta simply shifted to cherry-picking the best talent one by one.
Meanwhile, Murati’s lab — which raised a massive $2 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz with backing from Nvidia, AMD, and Jane Street — brought in PyTorch co-creator Soumith Chintala (a longtime Meta veteran) as its new CTO in January to help stabilize the ship.
The High-Stakes AI Talent War Reaching Breaking Point
This serial poaching raises serious questions about the viability of even well-funded AI startups in today’s environment. With Meta’s Superintelligence Labs — now led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang — already shipping its first model (Muse Spark) earlier this month, the pressure on smaller players is intensifying.
Deep-pocketed giants like Meta and OpenAI are turning the AI race into a winner-take-all battle where talent is the ultimate weapon. Compensation packages in the hundreds of millions or even billions are becoming the new normal, making it nearly impossible for startups to retain their best people.
Both Meta and Thinking Machines Lab have declined to comment on Gross’s departure.
What This Means for the Future of Independent AI Innovation
Murati, one of the most respected technical leaders in AI after her time as OpenAI’s CTO, launched Thinking Machines Lab in February 2025 with sky-high expectations. But just over a year later, her founding team is being systematically raided.
Is this the beginning of the end for independent AI labs, or just the latest chapter in Big Tech’s domination? As the talent war escalates and valuations soar into the hundreds of billions, many are wondering whether any startup — no matter how well-funded — can survive the gravitational pull of Meta, OpenAI, and Google.
The next few months will be critical for Murati and her remaining team. Can they rebuild and deliver breakthroughs fast enough to justify that $2 billion valuation, or will more key players head for the exits?
One thing is certain: in the 2026 AI race, loyalty is expensive — and Meta is willing to pay whatever it takes.
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