Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at Google

Barret Zoph, a co-founder of Thinking Machines who left the startup in January to rejoin OpenAI, has taken a position as vice president of research at Google, where he previously worked. A Google spokesperson said the company looks forward to Zoph bringing his reinforcement learning and post-training expertise to Gemini. Zoph's return to OpenAI lasted only five months before he left in June, amid a wave of high-profile executive departures at OpenAI.

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 https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/mira-muratis-startup-thinking-machines-lab-is-losing-two-of-its-co-founders-to-openai/ from the startup to return to OpenAI. 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 https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/952837/barret-zoph-openai-thinking-machines-lab 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 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/thinking-machines-lab-co-founder-barret-zoph-joins-google-49f594e6 . 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 is high https://www.lucent-search.com/post/86-of-ai-executives-struggle-to-retain-talent-why , 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. High-level executives — from the departure of its COO https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/brad-lightcap-openais-longtime-coo-is-leaving-to-start-something-new/ to the recent loss of one of its top data center execs https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/openai-loses-a-top-data-center-exec-as-stream-of-high-profile-departures-continues/? thumbnail id=3145297 — has left onlookers scratching their heads https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/how-do-we-explain-openais-executive-exodus/ .