I just noticed something that really reflects the current dynamics in the AI sector. Meta has already poached its seventh founding member from Thinking Machines Lab—most recently Mark Jen, Yinghai Lu, and researcher Tianyi Zhang. That’s interesting, because with a valuation of $12 billion, TML should actually be a serious contender.

But it just shows how intense the battle for top talent in AI has become. Meta and OpenAI are like two predators constantly keeping an eye out for the best minds from up-and-coming startups. OpenAI, for example, has snatched up Jolene Parish, who is also an original founding member of TML. Joshua Gross, who played a major role in Tinkers development, has also gone over to Meta.

What impresses me, though, is that TML doesn’t give up. They’ve just hired Neal Wu, a triple gold medalist at the International Olympiad in Informatics. This shows that, despite the departures, the startup continues to attract top researchers and is working on its products like Tinker.

All of this simply underscores how fiercely competitive this market is. The big players can just move faster with their resources. Interestingly, it’s also a sign that Tinker and similar AI tools are becoming increasingly important—otherwise, these tech giants wouldn’t be hunting talent so aggressively. Whoever has the talent has the future in the AI business.