A new AI startup called Core Automation, founded by an ex-OpenAI researcher, is snatching top talent from Anthropic and Google DeepMind.
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On Tuesday, Core Automation wrote in its first X post that it is “building the world’s most automated AI lab.”
“Our objective: systems that optimize and automate work, starting with research itself,” the company wrote in the post. Jerry Tworek, a former vice president at OpenAI, lists himself as the CEO and cofounder of Core Automation on his X bio.
In an X post on Tuesday, Anthropic researcher Rohan Anil said he left the company after Tworek “nerdsniped” him.
“Ok I did leave anthropic, a few weeks ago, it was one of the best places to work for a researcher,” Anil, who also worked in Google DeepMind, wrote. “Jerry Tworek nerdsniped me into starting this with him and others.”
Anmol Gulati, a research scientist from Google DeepMind working on Gemini, said in a post that he was “starting something new with some exceptional people.”
“I’ve increasingly felt that the current research paradigm — scaling models, data, and static deployment won’t get us all the way,” Gulati wrote. “We believe the next phase comes from something different: new learning algorithms, architectures beyond today’s stack, and systems that automate the process of building itself.”
Joanne Jang, whose LinkedIn says that she was a general manager at OpenAI from December 2021 to April 2026, has written in her X bio, “trying to automate myself @coreautoai.”
Others who have shared that they’ve joined the team include former Google DeepMind staffers Ehsan Amid and Avery Lamp, OpenAI’s ex-head of people, Julia Villagra, and Sai Surya Duvvuri, a former research intern at Google and Meta.
On its website, Core Automation wrote that its team consists of people who have “helped build frontier models” and “influential architectures.”
Big Tech to AI startups
It’s not the first time top AI researchers have left big labs for startups.
Yann LeCun, formerly Meta’s chief AI scientist, left the company to start his AI startup Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, also known as AMI Labs. The startup focuses on developing world models — AI systems that better understand and reflect the real world.
AMI Labs’ approach departs from Meta’s focus on commercially driven model development and scaling.
Last year, tech giants were battling over top AI talent, offering multibillion-dollar acquihires and massive pay packages.
Startups were also active players in the talent war, offering competitive salaries and equity packages, as well as the unique impact and ownership that come with working at a smaller company.
Shawn Thorne, managing director at executive search firm True Search, told Business Insider last year that base salaries at startups rose rapidly as they compete to attract AI talent.
Equity is “the big factor” helping offset the “opportunity cost” for top researchers or engineers who might otherwise choose to start their own ventures, he said.
To sweeten the deal, startups also offer additional incentives such as cofounder titles, access to compute, and time for independent research, Thorne added.
