US Top News and Analysis | Meta, Google, OpenAI among Big Tech firms seeing top staff leaving to launch AI startups AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information. Top AI researchers are increasingly departing major tech firms such as Google, Meta, and OpenAI to launch their own startups, securing massive funding in just a few months. Recent examples include former DeepMind researcher David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence, which closed a record $1.1 billion seed round, Tim Rocktäschel’s Recursive Superintelligence seeking up to $1 billion, and Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs raising $1 billion after he left Meta. Similar spin‑outs like Periodic Labs, Recursive Intelligence, and Humans& have each raised hundreds of millions, often recruiting talent from their founders’ former employers. Venture capitalists are betting heavily on these nimble ventures, having funneled $18.8 billion into AI startups founded since early 2025—a pace set to surpass the $27.9 billion invested in 2024. Investors cite the founders’ insider knowledge of scalable AI systems and the gaps left by large labs focusing narrowly on immediate commercial gains, opening opportunities in new model architectures, interpretability, vertical AI applications, and reinforcement‑learning approaches that larger labs are deprioritizing. Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/28/meta-google-big-tech-staff-ai-labs-investors.html #Meta #OpenAI #DeepMind #DavidSilver #TimRocktäschel #YannLeCun #EliseStern