Mira Murati, the founder of Thinking Machines Lab and ex-CTO of OpenAI, has widely made news since the founding of her AI-startup Thinking Machines Lab. The startup has been competing intensely in an ongoing battle for specialist AI talent.
Thinking Machines Lab has now recruited Soumith Chintala, one of Meta’s most recognisable AI engineers and a central figure in the development of modern AI frameworks. While the specific role taken up by Chintala remains unconfirmed, his LinkedIn reflects his role as a Member of Technical Staff at the company.
The news of Chintala joining Thinking Machines Lab from Meta’s AI team comes soon after co-founder Andrew Tulloch’s departure from Thinking Machines to join Meta’s AI team last month. This juncture reflects the dynamic and fast-paced nature of the AI market at present.
The company has spent recent months attracting senior researchers and engineers from across the sector, including talent from Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and leading universities. Chintala’s exit from Meta came as the company continues to adjust its internal AI structure. Over the past year, Meta has been rebuilding its AI teams, hiring extensively from competitors such as Google DeepMind, Apple, and OpenAI. These groups have been consolidated into its newly created Superintelligence Labs division, led by former Scale AI chief executive Alexandr Wang.
Chintala announced the move on Tuesday, writing on X: “thinking machines…the people are incredible.” He has updated both his X bio and his LinkedIn profile to reflect the job change, marking his first position since his departure from Meta earlier this month.
Chintala is widely regarded as a key architect behind PyTorch, the open-source framework created at Facebook and adopted across global tech firms and academic institutions. He brings significant technical influence to Murati’s fast-expanding venture. Thinking Machines Lab, which Murati launched in February following her exit from OpenAI, describes itself as an AI research and product organisation focused on “human-AI collaboration”.
