Meta, Google, OpenAI among Big Tech firms seeing top staff leaving to launch AI startups

top researchers are leaving meta, google, and openai to start their own ai companies, and investors are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars. yesterday, former google deepmind researcher david silver raised a record $1.1 billion seed round for his months-old startup ineffable intelligence. another ex-deepmind employee, tim rocktäschel, is reportedly raising up to $1 billion for recursive superintelligence. ami labs, founded by former meta ai chief yann lecun, announced a $1 billion raise in march. periodic labs, from former openai and deepmind staff, raised $300 million in september. investors have funneled $18.8 billion into ai startups founded since the start of 2025, on track to beat last year's $27.9 billion. the founders argue big tech's focus on commercial goals leaves room for new ideas. "for chipmakers to trust us with their most valuable ip, we have to be switzerland," said anna goldie of ricursive intelligence, which raised $335 million and reassembled the alphachip team from google.