Meta hires AI experts from Thinking Machines Lab to boost its AI efforts

is strengthening its artificial intelligence strategy by hiring three employees from Thinking Machines Lab, a startup valued at USD 12 billion.

This company was founded and led by Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, and is recognized for its talent in the AI sector.

According to Business Insider, two of these professionals, Mark Jen and Yinghai Lu, were part of the startup’s founding team.

Jen, a software engineer, had previously worked at Meta, while Lu, with experience at Meta and OpenAI, specializes in inference, an area that improves chatbot reasoning.

The third addition, Tianyi Zhang, an AI researcher at the lab, also joined Meta, bringing academic publication experience.

These departures add to a series of exits from Thinking Machines Lab, launched in 2025 and having raised USD 2 billion in funding rounds.

The startup is seen as a talent incubator in AI and faces fierce competition from recruiters in Silicon Valley.

Meta has already hired seven members of the founding team, including Joshua Gross, creator of its main product, Tinker.

Meanwhile, OpenAI brought in Jolene Parish, a startup founder and security expert.

Meta’s AI strategy, led by Mark Zuckerberg, involves investing hundreds of billions of dollars to transform its internal operations and enhance its platforms.

In November 2025, the company announced it would allocate USD 600 billion over three years for infrastructure and job creation in the United States, including specialized AI data centers. These investments aim to sustain Meta’s growth in a highly competitive market.

The recent hires come days after Reuters reported that Meta is considering laying off 8,000 employees, about 10% of its global workforce, with potential further cuts later this year depending on AI project developments.