The Class of '15, Ranked
By career stops · tiebreak by severance · n=8
| # | Subject | Stops | Tiebreak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Andrej Karpathy — the boomerang autodidact · OpenAI → Tesla → OpenAI → Eureka → Anthropic | 5 | recruited by Musk in person |
| 2 | John Schulman — Cap’n Three-Lab · OpenAI → Anthropic → Thinking Machines | 3 | currently still there |
| 3 | Noam Shazeer — Cap’n Boomerang · Google → Character.AI → Google (price: $2.7bn) | 3 | personal cut: ~$1bn |
| 4 | Barret Zoph — the same-day rehire · OpenAI → Thinking Machines → OpenAI | 3 | interval: 0 days |
| 5 | Tim Brooks — Google → OpenAI (Sora) → Google DeepMind | 3 | title: “world simulators” |
| 6 | Jan Leike — the thirteen-day safety convert · OpenAI → Anthropic | 2 | interval: 13 days |
| 7 | Mira Murati — the founder-in-residence · OpenAI → Thinking Machines | 2 | $12bn pre-product |
| 8 | Ross Nordeen — xAI → Anthropic | 2 | founding xAI employee; departed 2026 |
- Subject was reportedly dismissed by Thinking Machines for “unethical conduct” on 14 January 2026 and rehired by OpenAI before close of business. The Golden Boomerang, this issue, is his (see overleaf).