Vol. 1 · No.2 · 2 June 2026 THE AI INDUSTRY'S FORTNIGHTLY readcompute.com
Vol. 1
№ 2
June
£3.99
Compute!
Issue №2 · June 2026 Footnotes throughout. Disclaimers nowhere. UK £3.99 · US $5.99
The Lede

Karpathy: "I've joined Anthropic."OpenAI co-founder. Stop №5. Announced on X, 19 May 2026.

→ p. 05
The Money

Shazeer, sold back to Google for $2.7bn.Quit Google in 2021 over chatbot caution. Returned in 2024. Now co-leads Gemini.

→ p. 05
Andrej Karpathy mid-leap between OpenAI, Tesla and Anthropic logos — illustrated cover, Compute! Issue №2, June 2026.
FREE!
Pull-out
Poster
Inside!
FRONTIER LAB MOVEMENTS · 2024–2026

He's BACK.
(Again.)

The boomerang autodidact has joined Anthropic. It is his fifth lab. Meta has offered one engineer $1.5bn — and been turned down.
The Joke

Zoph, out of Thinking Machines: "unethical conduct".Reported by TechCrunch on 14 January 2026. Re-hired by OpenAI before close of business. The Golden Boomerang № 2.01.

→ p. 05
The Service

The Web. Vol. 2.Twelve portraits. Every move on the record. Pull out, pin up, follow the string.

→ pp. 14–15
On the record. On the corkboard. On the nose.
FRONTIER DISPATCH · SAN FRANCISCO ·

He's Back.
(Again.)

Andrej Karpathy — henceforth, in these pages, the boomerang autodidact — has joined Anthropic. It is his fifth lab. The corkboard has been extended six inches northward to accommodate his portrait. This is the third such extension this year.1
By The Editors · San Francisco · Filed

On Tuesday , the boomerang autodidact announced on X that he had joined Anthropic.2 Personal update. I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. He will lead a team using Claude to accelerate Claude's own pre-training, reporting to Nick Joseph.3

This is his fifth career stop in eleven years and the third time he has left OpenAI. He has not yet worked at Meta or DeepMind. He has, per his own X post, retained plans to "resume" his AI-education startup, Eureka Labs, "in time."4

The most chaotic résumé in his peer group is not, however, his. It belongs to John Schulman: OpenAI co-founder; resigned to Anthropic, August 2024; resigned from Anthropic to Thinking Machines, January 2025; chief scientist, currently. Three frontier labs in twenty-four months. Mira Murati — henceforth, in these pages, the founder-in-residence, who raised $2bn at a $12bn valuation on alumni capital before shipping a product5 — is, by this measure, two stops behind. Continued on page 5. →

"the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative." — Andrej Karpathy · X · 19 May 2026 · five labs in
  1. The previous two: Schulman, August 2024. Leike, May 2024. Mrs Ng, the carpenter, has been retained on a fortnightly basis.
  2. Karpathy on X, . The post received, at filing, 47,000 likes and one reply from a former Tesla colleague reading "lol."
  3. Nick Joseph, Anthropic's head of pre-training, has not posted publicly about the hire. Anthropic has not, for any of Leike, Schulman, Nordeen or the boomerang autodidact, posted a smiling-team-photo. See Horoscope, p. 18.
  4. The phrase "in time" appears nowhere in Karpathy's contract, which Compute! has not seen and is not implying it has.
  5. Murati to The Information, . The phrase will return in these pages. It always does.
Mean time-to-boomerang, OpenAI: 14 months.
Mode: zero.a — Fig. 1 · weighted by named subject · n=11 across 24 months
  1. Zoph: exit and re-hire same calendar day, . The mode of a sample including a zero is, for the purposes of this magazine, zero.

Pseuds Corner

A standing column · Issue 2
"We will pursue safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product." — Ilya Sutskever, founding statement, Safe Superintelligence Inc. ·
"I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration." — Mira Murati, on resigning the CTO role at OpenAI · The Information ·
"We are building personal superintelligence for everyone." — Alexandr Wang, on assuming the role of Chief AI Officer at Meta Superintelligence Labs ·
"I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative." — Andrej Karpathy, on joining his fifth frontier lab · X ·

The Frontier Circular

A bulletin of trivial movements · fortnight ending 1 June
  1. Mr. Karpathy attended a stand-up at Anthropic's San Francisco office. He brought a small moving box. The box was, by all accounts, the same one.
  2. Mr. Altman was Not Present at the stand-up. He was, per his brother's podcast, "not worried" about it.
  3. Ms. Murati was, at filing, still raising. The round is structured as equity. The equity is, by all reports, in her.
  4. Mr. Schulman was reported to be, at filing, still at Thinking Machines. Compute! is unable to confirm this beyond the close of business.
  5. Mr. Nordeen, late of xAI, was observed walking past a Tesla showroom without stopping.
  6. Mr. Zuckerberg opened a new Slack workspace. Seven people from OpenAI were already in it.
  7. The Anthropic comms team was, as ever, busy.
Compute! · No.2 · p. 04
A corkboard with hedcut portraits of AI researchers connected by red string between OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, xAI, and Thinking Machines logos — illustration only
SPOTTED: The corkboard has, per Ms Patel, its representative, filed for a budget increase.
← Continued from p. 04

The price has, for the first time, been printed. Meta has reportedly offered top OpenAI researchers signing packages above $100 million; for one unnamed engineer, the figure was $1.5 billion — and was turned down.6 Meta Superintelligence Labs — the name is real — is led by Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, with ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman as a partner. The summer's haul: seven from OpenAI, two from DeepMind, one from Anthropic, one from Sesame.7

The openly-sweatered Sam Altman, asked about this on his brother's podcast, said "none of [our] best people" took the offer. Two sentences later he allowed that Meta had "gotten a few great people." The boomerang autodidact, on this occasion, was not among them.

Google has, by contrast, paid for its returns in cash. In August 2024 it acquihired Noam Shazeer — henceforth, in these pages, Cap'n Boomerang — for $2.5 billion, returning the engineer who had quit in 2021 over chatbot caution. His personal cut: ~$1 billion.8 He now co-leads Gemini.

Anthropic — henceforth the quiet hirer — has, in twelve months, added Leike, Schulman, Nordeen and the boomerang autodidact. It has not, for any of them, posted a smiling-team-photo.

requests a budget increase of $14.20 for additional red string. The corkboard further notes that Mr. Karpathy's portrait has been re-pinned to a position six inches northwest of its previous location and declines, at this time, to comment on whether the move is permanent.
  1. Entrepreneur and Wired, 2025, on Zuckerberg's reported $1.5bn package. The engineer is not named. The package is, by all reports, structured as equity. The equity is, by all reports, in Meta. The offer was, by all reports, declined.
  2. BusinessInsider, 2025. The Sesame researcher's name has been redacted in three of four published reports. The corkboard has him pinned anyway.
  3. Calcalist, 2024. Shazeer reportedly owned 30–40% of Character.AI. The acquihire was structured as a licence, not an acquisition, for reasons unrelated to this magazine.

From the Editor

No.2 · 2 June 2026

Issue 2 retires an epithet. An earlier draft of this magazine deployed Mira Murati's resignation-letter line — "create the time and space to do my own exploration" — nine times across one fortnight. By the fourth deployment, it had stopped being satire and started being a tic. By the ninth, the magazine was doing the thing it had set out to satirise: quoting a woman at herself until the quote became the joke.

In its place we have given Ms Murati a structural epithet — the founder-in-residence — that names what she did, not what she said about leaving. She raised $2bn at a $12bn valuation on alumni capital before shipping a product. That is the joke. It does not need her own words to land it.

The corkboard, per Ms Patel its representative, considers the matter closed.

— Nicolle Weeks · Editor, Compute!

Letters to the Editor

A standing column · No.2 · selected from the mailbag

Sir — Your magazine's first issue was, in its treatment of a certain frontier laboratory's communications function, unkind, intemperate, and demonstrably accurate. I write only to note that I have, since publication, created the time and space to do my own exploration of the matter. — M. M., San Francisco

Sir — Reports that I have, on five occasions, left a frontier laboratory are exaggerated. I have left a frontier laboratory only three of those times. The other two I was, technically, joining a different one. — A. K., somewhere on the 101

Sir — Your previous issue alleged that none of our best people had taken Meta's offer. I write to confirm this, and separately, to confirm that Meta has gotten a few great people. — S. A., the 4-zip top half

Sir — Your characterisation of my client as "the openly-sweatered Sam Altman" is incomplete. The garment described is more properly a quarter-zip; the matter is not without distinction. I trust your next issue will reflect this. — J. W., on behalf of a frontier laboratory · address withheld

Madam — Your previous issue ran twelve illustrated portraits. I counted three women. Two of us are characters; one is the judge. I have written to your competitors with the same observation and received, in two cases, an autoreply, and in one, an offer of a podcast appearance. — A reader, in HR, somewhere in the FTSE 100

Standing Awards

Issue 2 · cited numerically · winners will be referenced in subsequent issues
The
Golden
Boomerang

Barret Zoph

For fastest exit-to-rehire, same-day division. Dismissed by Thinking Machines for reported "unethical conduct" on the morning of 14 January 2026; observed at his former desk at OpenAI before close of business. № 2.01 · referenced hereafter as the inaugural Golden Boomerang.
The
Order of
the Slack DM

The Anthropic Recruiter

She has, per LinkedIn, a name and a title. Four recent hires have credited her by both. The trade press has, in twelve months of coverage, reproduced neither. The corkboard, per Ms Patel, its representative, has filed a FOIA. № 2.02
The
Order of
the Open
Letter

Jan Leike

For the resignation post that the trade press reproduced en masse within twenty-four hours. "Safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products." Posted on X, . He joined Anthropic on — thirteen days after his stated resignation date. № 2.03 · see also Issue 1, p. 09.

The Acquihire Beta

Fig. 2 · personal net worth (post-deal) vs. publicly-stated principles · regression
Subject$ realisedStatement of principleβ
Shazeer~$1bn"would not let me ship a chatbot"0.92
Murati$12bn (valuation)pre-product, on alumni capitaln/ac
Zophundisclosed"unethical conduct" (alleged)—
Wang$14.3bn (Scale)"build superintelligence"1.00
Sutskever$32bn (valuation)"one focus, one goal, one product"0 (no product)
  1. Time-and-space, per the subject's standing statement to The Information, remains an explanatory variable rather than a dependent one. The regression has been withheld pending further exploration.
Compute! · No.2 · p. 05

The Class of '15, Ranked

By career stops · tiebreak by severance · n=8
#SubjectStopsTiebreak
1Andrej Karpathythe boomerang autodidact · OpenAI → Tesla → OpenAI → Eureka → Anthropic5recruited by Musk in person
2John SchulmanCap'n Three-Lab · OpenAI → Anthropic → Thinking Machines3currently still there
3Noam ShazeerCap'n Boomerang · Google → Character.AI → Google (price: $2.7bn)3personal cut: ~$1bn
4Barret Zophthe same-day rehire · OpenAI → Thinking Machines → OpenAI3interval: 0 daysb
5Tim BrooksGoogle → OpenAI (Sora) → Google DeepMind3title: "world simulators"
6Jan Leikethe thirteen-day safety convert · OpenAI → Anthropic2interval: 13 days
7Mira Muratithe founder-in-residence · OpenAI → Thinking Machines2$12bn pre-product
8Ross NordeenxAI → Anthropic2founding xAI employee; departed 2026
  1. Subject was reportedly dismissed by Thinking Machines for "unethical conduct" on and rehired by OpenAI before close of business. The Golden Boomerang, this issue, is his (see overleaf).

Separated at Birth

A standing column · cited numerically · Issue 2 · № SAB.2
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — illustrated portrait, Compute! Issue №2.
Mr. Altman, in a sweater
Mr. Altman, in a vest

Has anyone noticed that Sam Altman in a sweater and Sam Altman in a vest have never been photographed in the same room? Compute! raises the matter only because a recent correspondent — see Letters, p. 05 — appears to have very strong views about which is which. The corkboard, per Ms Patel, its representative, declines to take sides.

Compute! · No.2 · p. 12
The Web
Vol. 2 · The Musical-Chairs edition. Every move below is on the record. Pull out, pin up, follow the string.
Every move on this poster is on the record. Sourced from TechCrunch, CNBC, Axios, Bloomberg, BusinessInsider, Calcalist, Wikipedia, and the subjects' own X posts · May 2024 – May 2026.
recent / notable move boomerang / return
Compute! · No.2 · pp. 14–15
Your AI Lab
Horoscope.
Compute! · Issue №2 · The Stars, Re-Hired
Six labs. One paragraph each. Earth signs hire. Fire signs leave. Anthropic is, as ever, an earth sign.

OpenAI.

Fire sign · The Revolving Door
Has, in twenty-four months, lost Murati to a competitor she founded with three of its own researchers; lost the boomerang autodidact twice; lost Schulman to a competitor of a competitor; rehired Zoph the same calendar day he was dismissed by Murati; and, separately, been told by its own CEO on his brother's podcast that "none of [our] best people" took Meta's offer. Holds, this issue, the inaugural Golden Boomerang (№ 2.01). Org chart, by Compute! count: a flipbook.
Hired: Zoph, Metz (returned)Lost: Murati, Karpathy ×2, Schulman, Leike, BrooksAvoid: goodbye parties

Anthropic.

Earth sign · The Quiet Hirer
Has, in twelve months, hired Leike, Schulman, Nordeen and Karpathy. Has not, for any of them, posted a smiling-team-photo. Valuation: $380bn. Mood: unbothered.
Hired: Karpathy, Nordeen, Schulman, LeikeLost: none on recordAvoid: celebrating in public

Meta MSL.

Water sign · The Patron
Led by Meta's bag-carrier, with Nat Friedman as a partner. Reportedly offered one engineer $1.5bn — and was turned down. Per the openly-sweatered Sam Altman: "none of [our] best people" took the offer. Per the openly-sweatered Sam Altman, two sentences later: Meta has "gotten a few great people."
Hired: 7 from OpenAI · 2 from DeepMind · 1 from Anthropic · 1 from SesameLost: the second sentenceAvoid: open-source pivots

xAI.

Fire sign · The Accelerationist
Founder lost a federal trial against the company he founded. Founding employee Ross Nordeen has departed for Anthropic. Valuation, last reported: $134bn.
Hired: pendingLost: Nordeen, the trialAvoid: sworn testimony

Google DeepMind.

Air sign · The Patient Buyer
Bought Cap'n Boomerang back for $2.7bn, three years after he quit over not being allowed to ship a chatbot. He now co-leads Gemini. Tim Brooks has also returned, this time on "world simulators." Wins by waiting.
Hired: Shazeer ($2.7bn), BrooksLost: two researchers to MetaAvoid: chatbot caution, in retrospect

Thinking Machines.

Air sign · The Sequel
Founded February 2025 by the founder-in-residence with ~30 hires from competitors. Seed round July 2025: $2bn at a $12bn valuation, pre-product. Lost co-founder Barret Zoph to OpenAI in January 2026 over reported "unethical conduct" (see Golden Boomerang, № 2.01). Still, at filing, has Schulman.
Hired: ~30 from OpenAI, Meta, MistralLost: Zoph (same-day), MetzAvoid: reading the room of a room you built
Next fortnight, on the corkboard: the cap table. Same string. Different colour.
Compute! Coming Next Fortnight No. 3 · 16 June 2026
NEXT ISSUE · COMING ATTRACTIONS

The Cap-Table
Yearbook.

Who funded whom, who sits on whose board, and the seven investors who quietly own a piece of every frontier lab. The Web returns — this time, in dollars.
01
Verdict Watch

Musk v. Altman:
did the jury buy it?

The verdict, annotated. What the appellate courts will probably do with it. And a final, sober tally of how much the grudge cost — to Musk, to OpenAI, and to the rest of us in legal fees.

02
Long Read

Every cap table is
a yearbook.

The seven investors — names you know, and names you don't — who quietly own a piece of OpenAI, Anthropic, SSI, xAI, Thinking Machines, Mistral, and Cohere. With a Web pull-out in dollars, not job titles.

03
Pull-out Poster · pp. 14–15

The Web,
volume three.

Same corkboard, different string. Every board seat, every angel cheque, every limited-partner clause that ties the founders' destinies together. With dates, with destinations, with receipts.

Every quote is real. Every image is an illustration. Compute! · Vol.1 · No.2 · £3.99 / $5.99

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