Meta 'empties' the startup of Mira Murati: another blow in the AI war

The competition for talent in artificial intelligence increasingly involves emerging startups and big tech companies. The latest news concerns Thinking Machines Lab, a company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, which has lost another founding member to Meta.

According to information emerging on LinkedIn and reported by Business Insider, Joshua Gross - a software engineer with previous experience at OpenAI and at Meta (then Facebook) - has left the startup to join Meta Superintelligence Labs, where he now leads engineering teams. Gross was one of the main architects in the development of Tinker, the flagship product of Thinking Machines Lab.

Thinking Machines Lab, which collected about $2 billion in 2025 and reached a valuation of $12 billion, has quickly transformed into an attractive hub for industry specialists. However, the growth of the startup - now estimated at around 130 employees, more than quadrupling since its founding - is being severely challenged by large tech companies eager to drain its talent. Meta, in particular, is said to have already hired five founding members, including co-founder Andrew Tulloch. Meanwhile, OpenAI has also tapped into the same pool, recruiting former CTO Barret Zoph and cybersecurity specialist Jolene Parish.

Despite the departures, Thinking Machines Lab has strengthened its technical structure with some notable hires. Among these is Soumith Chintala, known for creating the open-source project PyTorch, appointed as the new CTO. Additionally, the entry of Neal Wu, a programmer with three gold medals in international computing competitions, confirms the startup's strategy to focus on highly specialized profiles.

The bidirectional flow of talent between startups and big tech highlights how the job market in AI has entered a phase of significant instability, where compensation, infrastructure, and access to data play a decisive role. Perhaps, to become more attractive, Thinking Machines Lab has signed an agreement with NVIDIA to gain more computing power.