Two key members depart Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab for Meta

Thinking Machines Lab, led by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has recently experienced the departure of two founding members to Meta.

These individuals are among the latest to leave Thinking Machines Lab, which secured $2 billion in funding, reaching a valuation of $12 billion last year. 

Situated in San Francisco, this startup is dedicated to aiding developers in the tailored creation of AI models, and has been subject to talent acquisition by larger tech and AI firms like Meta and OpenAI.

Both Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, originally named on Thinking Machines Lab’s website as co-founders, have been at Meta for the last few weeks, according to insiders.

Gibson, who previously worked with OpenAI, is an expert in supercomputers designed for AI model training and contributed to the original ChatGPT model.

Shpak is an engineer with a keen focus on AI, with experience at Character.AI and the company now known as X (formerly Twitter).

In a similar trend, Andrew Tulloch, another co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, joined Meta last year. 

Last month, the startup's CTO, Barret Zoph, along with Luke Metz and two researchers, went over to OpenAI. 

Additionally, Jolene Parish, a member specialising in security, has also left, according to Business Insider's report.

Thinking Machines Lab has a reputation for attracting elite AI professionals. Quietly, it welcomed Neal Wu, a programmer who has won three Olympiad gold medals in programming, and Soumith Chintala, who initiated the PyTorch AI project at Meta and is now the CTO, as reported earlier by Business Insider.