Thinking Machines Lab Co-Founder Barret Zoph Joins Google (3 minute read)

TLDR AI 08/27/26, 12:00 AM News

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Summary

Barret Zoph, a former co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab and recent employee of OpenAI, has joined Google as vice-president of research to help boost AI development efforts.

Barret Zoph was a co-founder at Thinking Machines Lab before defecting to OpenAI this year due to a dispute with Chief Executive Mira Murati. Zoph is now leaving OpenAI to join Google as vice-president of research. Google is currently restructuring its AI development efforts to catch up with rivals in developing AI that can create code. Zoph had worked as a research scientist at Google from 2016 through to 2022.

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