Mira Murati's AI lab loses 2 founding members to Meta
What's the story
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI start-up led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has witnessed another major exit. Two of its founding members, Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, have left the company for Meta. Gibson is a former OpenAI engineer who contributed to the development of the first ChatGPT model. He specializes in supercomputers for AI training. Meanwhile, Shpak is an AI engineer with experience at Character. AI and X (formerly Twitter).
Talent drain
Series of exits from Thinking Machines Lab
The exits of Gibson and Shpak come after a series of high-profile departures from Thinking Machines Lab. These include Andrew Tulloch (to Meta), CTO Barret Zoph and co-founder Luke Metz (to OpenAI), as well as several researchers and founding member Jolene Parish, who specialized in security. Last month, Zoph had also confirmed his departure in a post on X.
Market standing
Despite departures, Thinking Machines Lab continues to thrive
Despite the talent exodus, Thinking Machines Lab, based in San Francisco, remains a major player in custom AI model development. The company raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation last year. Thinking Machines Lab had previously assembled an all-star team of ex-OpenAI, Meta, and Mistral AI researchers. In October 2025, the company launched Tinker, an API designed to help researchers fine-tune language models with less code and hassle.