Thinking Machines’ $40B Raise Follows 10 Founding Exits

Thinking Machines Lab is raising $5 billion at a $40 billion pre-money valuation, Business Insider reported on 6 November, and the same report said about a third of its founding team has left. Counting only departures with a published source, at least ten founding members have gone, as reported by July 2026, and nine of them went to Meta or OpenAI, by our arithmetic.

Five went to Meta, The Next Web reported in April; four went to OpenAI, three in January and Lilian Weng in July; and one, Devendra Chaplot, left for xAI. The round itself is covered in our first piece on the raise.

Who Left, and Where They Went

• Andrew Tulloch, a co-founder, left for Meta in October 2025, with a package reportedly worth $1.5 billion over six years, The Next Web reported.
• Barret Zoph and Luke Metz, both officially co-founders, and Sam Schoenholz, a member of the founding team, returned to OpenAI in January 2026, Fortune reported. OpenAI’s Fidji Simo said on X the hiring had been “in the works for several weeks.”
• Devendra Chaplot left for xAI in March 2026, The Next Web reported.
• Joshua Gross, a founding engineer who built Tinker, the company’s core API product, joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in March 2026, The Next Web reported.
• Lilian Weng, a co-founder, said 29 July 2026 would be her last day and is returning to OpenAI to work on recursive self-improvement, OfficeChai reported, citing The Information.
• Three more of Meta’s five Thinking Machines hires are counted by The Next Web but not named in its report.

The Next Web reported that Mira Murati remains chief executive, Soumith Chintala, the creator of PyTorch, is chief technology officer, and John Schulman continues as chief scientist.

What the Count Shows

By our arithmetic, nine of the ten reported departures went to two companies: five to Meta and four to OpenAI. The Next Web reported that Meta pivoted to recruiting the founding team one by one after Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered about $1 billion to acquire the company outright and was rejected.

Business Insider set the departures against the size of the round, writing that the raise shows investors “are still willing to place enormous bets on AI labs even as the industry’s talent war intensifies.”

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Connecting the Coverage

This is a follow-up to Thinking Machines Nears $5B Raise at $40B, 3.3x Its Seed. Earlier pieces: Thinking Machines Lab Loses Another Cofounder to OpenAI, on Weng’s July exit; Murati’s Inkling 2 Small Scores 31; Output Price Down 75%, on the model shipped this week; Thinking Machines Lab Officially Closes $2B at $12B Valuation; Thinking Machines’ Tinker Adds OpenAI-Compatible Inference; and, on the wider talent market, Anthropic Senior Engineers Average $621K, 1.5x Google’s L5.

The Structural Read

As we read the count, the departures concentrated at two companies: nine of ten went to Meta or OpenAI.

As we read the timing, investors are pricing the lab higher after what Business Insider estimates is the loss of about a third of its founding team, which suggests they are valuing the remaining leaders, the Tinker product and the models rather than the original roster.

As we read the leadership list The Next Web gave, Murati and Schulman remain in their roles, while the chief technology officer, Soumith Chintala, joined from Meta’s FAIR lab.

Three Implications

FOR THINKING MACHINES Business Insider reports the round could close as soon as this week; the company declined to comment.

FOR META AND OPENAI The Next Web counts five hires by Meta; Fortune and reports of July count four returns to OpenAI.

FOR AI LABS RAISING PRIVATELY Business Insider reads the round as a sign investors still place enormous bets on AI labs even as the talent war intensifies.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The Four Intelligence Moats.

The framework says: “The transformer is a commodity now; what changes between paradigms is where intelligence accumulates and who can capture it.”

As we read it, the departures test where Thinking Machines’ intelligence accumulates: in people who can leave, or in products such as Tinker and its models that stay. The framework itself does not discuss Thinking Machines or these departures.

What Is Not Established

Neither Thinking Machines nor the people named has confirmed the full list, and three of Meta’s five hires are unnamed in the reporting. The size of the original founding team is not established in our sources, so we do not compute a share of it; Business Insider’s “about a third” is its own estimate. The round has not closed and is reported from unnamed sources. The count of ten and the nine-of-ten share are our arithmetic on reported departures.

The Bottom Line

At least ten Thinking Machines Lab founding members have left, as reported by July 2026, nine of them to Meta or OpenAI, by our count of reported departures, as the company raises $5 billion at a $40 billion pre-money valuation, Business Insider reported.

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A note on sourcing. The round and the “about a third” estimate are as reported by Business Insider on 6 November 2026, citing sources familiar with the matter. The Meta hires, Chaplot’s move, the leadership list and the acquisition offer are as reported by The Next Web on 21 April 2026. The January returns to OpenAI are as reported by Fortune on 16 January 2026. Lilian Weng’s move is as reported by OfficeChai on 30 July 2026, citing The Information. The count of ten and the nine-of-ten share are our arithmetic on those reports.