We had more drama in AI land on Wednesday night, as several people exited Thinking Machines Lab, the high-profile startup cofounded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, for OpenAI.

Details remain murky but here’s what we know for sure. On Wednesday night, Murati said in a post on X that the company had “parted ways” with Barret Zoph, a fellow cofounder and the Chief Technology Officer of Thinking Machines. An hour later, Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, posted on X that OpenAI had hired Zoph, along with two other Thinking Machines researchers Luke Metz and Sam Schoenholz. Metz was also a Thinking Machines cofounder and all three researchers had originally hailed from OpenAI.

We’re getting two different narratives from the companies. Murati told staff that the company had fired Zoph for “unethical conduct,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Meanwhile, Simo said in her X post that OpenAI had been in talks to hire Zoph, Metz and Schoenholz for weeks. She also told OpenAI staff in a memo that Zoph had told Murati on Monday that he was considering leaving and was then fired on Wednesday, adding that OpenAI didn’t share the same concerns about Zoph as Murati, according to Wired.

Whatever the truth is, one thing is clear: Thinking Machines, which in recent months was in talks to raise new funding at a whopping $50 billion-plus valuation, has lost several prominent staffers. That doesn’t seem ideal for a startup that has yet to prove why it deserves an expensive valuation. I can’t imagine this gives Thinking Machines’ investors a ton of confidence in the company either, as several of them were telling me last night that they were caught completely off-guard by the announcement.

And for OpenAI, the hires represent a win after months of battering competition from Google, Anthropic and others.—Stephanie Palazzolo

Meanwhile…

Earlier this week, Meta laid off over 1,000 employees at its virtual reality division Reality Labs, reigniting concerns about the state of the tech job market. Recent college grads have been especially worried about their job prospects. Though the AI industry is booming, AI can now write much of the code for which companies previously needed to hire a programmer.