Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines Co-Founder Ousted Before Joining OpenAI, Is Now at Google
Barret Zoph announced on 26 August 2026 that he is joining Google DeepMind as vice president of research, working on reinforcement learning and post-training for Gemini. It closes a twenty-two month sequence that took him from OpenAI to co-founding Thinking Machines Lab with Mira Murati, to a disputed firing on 14 January 2026, to five months leading enterprise business back at OpenAI. This breakdown covers what the new role is and is not, both accounts of the Thinking Machines termination, his 2016-2022 Google Brain record, the 2026 departures that emptied the seat he is filling, where Thinking Machines stands now, and what any organisation buying AI should take from it.