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AI NewsBarret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at Google

Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines co-founder who defected to OpenAI, is now at Google

1:45 AM IST · August 28, 2026

The game of musical chairs for AI executives continues. Barret Zoph, a co-founder of the AI startup Thinking Machines who left the company earlier this year to rejoin OpenAI, has found yet another job. Zoph spent two years at OpenAI and left in October 2024 to co-found Thinking Machines with Mira Murati, who had left the AI lab the month prior. In January, Zoph and another Thinking Machines co-founder, Luke Metz,quite dramatically departedfrom the startup to return to OpenAI. His return didn’t quite stick. Zoph spent only five months at OpenAI, where he was tasked with heading AI enterprise sales. Heleft the companyin June. And now we know where he landed. Zoph has taken a position as vice president of research at Google (which happens to be another company where he previously worked). “We look forward to Barret returning to Google and bringing his RL and post-training expertise to Gemini,” a Google spokesperson told theWall Street Journal. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI and Google for more information. It’s not always easy to divine why tech executives seem to be spending less time in their roles. The turnover rate in the AI industryis high, and it’s been especially high at OpenAI — a company that, despite readying itself for an IPO and being one of the most powerful presences in the tech world, has lost a lot of critical staff over the last eight months. High-level executives — from thedeparture of its COOto the recent loss of one ofits top data center execs— has left onlookersscratching their heads.

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OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 other companies call for action to defend against rogue AI

Over a hundred tech companies — including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft — have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter — which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms — calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the “local, national, and international levels” to collaborate on security. “In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable,” the letter states. “The companies and public services our communities depend on — from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet — are at risk.” The problem AI poses to traditional cybersecurity defenses has been thrust into the spotlight lately by a string of bizarre incidents in which AI agents have attacked companies. The Hugging Face incident — in which one of OpenAI’s agentsautonomously broke outof its sandboxed environment and attacked the tech company — has been followed by a trail ofother reported break-insinvolving agents developed by other AI companies, including Anthropic and Meta. These incidents have bolstered the argument that the field of cybersecurity has been fundamentally altered and that bold new commercial solutions are necessary to mitigate them. The letter further suggests the mobilization of a “collective response,” one in which “new partnerships” are formed “to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats.” Several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position. At the same time, they are also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes, including OpenAI’sDaybreakprogram,Anthropic’s Mythos, and Microsoft’s new cyber platformPerception.

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