ET Graphics: AI gurus rush to join talent musical chairs

AI researcher Andrej Karpathy’s move to Anthropic last week was widely celebrated as a major catch for the company at a time when it is scaling new heights. Netizens even joked that at this pace Anthropic might just end up hiring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

But 2026 so far marked some of the biggest executive talent movements among frontier AI companies back and forth. From OpenAI and Anthropic to Google DeepMind, Meta and Thinking Machines Lab, the industry is witnessing one of the fiercest talent wars. Himanshi Lohchab lists some of these crucial leadership movements.