Google Hires Barret Zoph as Research VP in Return From OpenAI and Thinking Machines Lab

The former Thinking Machines Lab co-founder joins Google DeepMind to lead reinforcement learning and post-training efforts for Gemini AI models. Barret Zoph, who served as chief technology officer at Thinking Machines Lab, brings expertise in RL to the company's frontier model development.

The appointment marks a return to Google for Zoph, who began his AI career in the Google Brain Residency class. He previously held roles at OpenAI and served as CTO of Thinking Machines Lab before a second stint at OpenAI.