Several employees at the nearly one-year-old AI startup Thinking Machines Lab are reportedly in discussions to leave the company and rejoin former OpenAI executives.

OpenAI Alumni Leading The Exodus

On Thursday, Alex Heath, a popular tech journalist, took to X and said, "More Thinking Machines employees are in talks to join the 3 founding members who just rejoined OpenAI."

The three founding members who returned to OpenAI are Barret Zoph, Luke Metz and Sam Schoenholz.

The discussions are ongoing and it remains unclear how many employees will ultimately depart, Heath said.

Internal Tensions And Departures

The potential exodus follows the firing of Zoph earlier this week.

In his newsletter, Health cited sources indicating that at least a few employees resigned after a tense all-hands meeting addressing his departure.

Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has struggled to define a clear business and product strategy.

Despite raising a $2 billion seed round last year, the startup has had difficulty securing additional funding, aiming to boost its valuation from $10 billion to $50 billion, Heath wrote.

Its only product, Tinker, is an API for fine-tuning open-source AI models and the company has yet to train a major foundation model.

Thinking Machines Lab and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments.

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