Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder ousted before joining OpenAI, is now at Google

摘要: In Brief

12:52 PM PDT · August 27, 2026

Image Credits:

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Lucas Ropek

Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machi

正文

In Brief

12:52 PM PDT · August 27, 2026

Image Credits:

Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Lucas Ropek

Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder ousted before joining OpenAI, is now at Google

The game of musical chairs for AI executives continues. Barret Zoph, a co-founder of the AI startup Thinking Machines who left the company earlier this year to rejoin OpenAI, has found yet another job.

Zoph spent two years at OpenAI and left in October 2024 to co-found Thinking Machines with Mira Murati, who had left the AI lab the month prior. In January, Zoph and another Thinking Machines co-founder, Luke Metz,

quite dramatically departed

from the startup to return to OpenAI. It was later

revealed that Zoph had been fired

.

His return didn’t quite stick. Zoph spent only five months at OpenAI, where he was tasked with heading AI enterprise sales. He

left the company

in June. And now we know where he landed.

Zoph has taken a position as vice president of research at Google (which happens to be another company where he previously worked). “We look forward to Barret returning to Google and bringing his RL and post-training expertise to Gemini,” a Google spokesperson told the

Wall Street Journal

.

TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI and Google for more information.

It’s not always easy to divine why tech executives seem to be spending less time in their roles. The turnover rate in the AI industry

, and it’s been especially high at OpenAI — a company that, despite readying itself for an IPO and being one of the most powerful presences in the tech world, has lost a lot of critical staff over the last eight months. The turnover of high-level executives — from the

departure of its COO

to the recent loss of one of

its top data center execs

— has left onlookers

scratching their heads

.

This story has been updated to include the fact that Zoph was fired from Thinking Machines.

Barret Zoph

In Brief

来源: TechCrunch AI