Lilian Weng Returns to OpenAI to Lead RSI Team as TML Loses 4 Co-founders
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-07-30
Lilian Weng, who recently left Thinking Machines Lab (TML) citing health reasons, has swiftly returned to OpenAI. She will lead the highly prioritized Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) team, focusing on enabling models to train and improve their own successors.
This move means three of TML's six co-founders have now returned to OpenAI. Since Mira Murati founded TML, at least 14 of the 42 founding members have departed, leaving only Murati and Chief Scientist John Schulman. Previously, Barret Zoph and Luke Metz also left TML for OpenAI.
Weng, who previously spent nearly seven years at OpenAI leading safety systems and contributing to GPT-4, highlights OpenAI's powerful talent poaching capabilities. Meanwhile, TML is facing a severe brain drain and stability crisis before even launching a flagship model.
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