The AI-Lab Horoscope · №2
Six labs. One paragraph each. Earth signs hire. Fire signs leave. Anthropic is, as ever, an earth sign.
OpenAI. — Fire sign · The Revolving Door
Has, in twenty-four months, lost Murati to a competitor she founded with three of its own researchers; lost the boomerang autodidact twice; lost Schulman to a competitor of a competitor; rehired Zoph the same calendar day he was dismissed by Murati; and, separately, been told by its own CEO on his brother’s podcast that “none of [our] best people” took Meta’s offer. Holds, this issue, the inaugural Golden Boomerang (№ 2.01). Org chart, by Compute! count: a flipbook.
- Hired: Zoph, Metz (returned)
- Lost: Murati, Karpathy ×2, Schulman, Leike, Brooks
- Avoid: goodbye parties
Anthropic. — Earth sign · The Quiet Hirer
Has, in twelve months, hired Leike, Schulman, Nordeen and Karpathy. Has not, for any of them, posted a smiling-team-photo. Valuation: $380bn. Mood: unbothered.
- Hired: Karpathy, Nordeen, Schulman, Leike
- Lost: none on record
- Avoid: celebrating in public
Meta MSL. — Water sign · The Patron
Led by Meta’s bag-carrier, with Nat Friedman as a partner. Reportedly offered one engineer $1.5bn — and was turned down. Per the openly-sweatered Sam Altman: “none of [our] best people” took the offer. Per the openly-sweatered Sam Altman, two sentences later: Meta has “gotten a few great people.”
- Hired: 7 from OpenAI · 2 from DeepMind · 1 from Anthropic · 1 from Sesame
- Lost: the second sentence
- Avoid: open-source pivots
xAI. — Fire sign · The Accelerationist
Founder lost a federal trial against the company he founded. Founding employee Ross Nordeen has departed for Anthropic. Valuation, last reported: $134bn.
- Hired: pending
- Lost: Nordeen, the trial
- Avoid: sworn testimony
Google DeepMind. — Air sign · The Patient Buyer
Bought Cap’n Boomerang back for $2.7bn, three years after he quit over not being allowed to ship a chatbot. He now co-leads Gemini. Tim Brooks has also returned, this time on “world simulators.” Wins by waiting.
- Hired: Shazeer ($2.7bn), Brooks
- Lost: two researchers to Meta
- Avoid: chatbot caution, in retrospect
Thinking Machines. — Air sign · The Sequel
Founded February 2025 by the founder-in-residence with ~30 hires from competitors. Seed round July 2025: $2bn at a $12bn valuation, pre-product. Lost co-founder Barret Zoph to OpenAI in January 2026 over reported “unethical conduct” (see Golden Boomerang, № 2.01). Still, at filing, has Schulman.
- Hired: ~30 from OpenAI, Meta, Mistral
- Lost: Zoph (same-day), Metz
- Avoid: reading the room of a room you built