$12B AI startup Thinking Machines Lab loses 2 founding members to Meta

Gibson and Shpak, previously listed as members of the company’s founding team, have now been working at Meta for several weeks, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by Business Insider.

Gibson is a former OpenAI engineer who specializes in supercomputers used to train AI models and worked on the first ChatGPT model. Shpak is an AI engineer who previously worked at Character.AI and X.

Founded in 2025 by Murati and a group of former OpenAI executives and researchers, Thinking Machines Lab quickly became one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched AI startups.

In July, the company raised about $2 billion in a record-setting seed round that valued it at roughly $12 billion. Bloomberg previously reported that it was in talks to raise additional funding at a valuation of up to $50 billion, underscoring strong investor interest in generative AI ventures.

Mira Murati, founder of AI startup Thinking Machines Lab. Photo from Instagram

The latest exits follow several other high-level departures from the firm.

Andrew Tulloch, another co-founder, left for Meta last year. Last month, the company lost its chief technology officer Barret Zoph and co-founder Luke Metz to OpenAI, along with two researchers. Jolene Parish, a founding member specializing in security, also departed.

Talent movement between major AI companies is common in Silicon Valley, where firms compete aggressively for engineers and researchers. However, the departure of multiple co-founders within a year of a startup’s launch is notable. The simultaneous loss of two founding members could be viewed as a setback for Thinking Machines Lab, TechCrunch reported.