[
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "Anthropic",
    "year": "2021",
    "cluster": "safety-leaning researchers led by former VP of Research Dario Amodei",
    "note": "founded as a public benefit corporation",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "Adept AI",
    "year": "2022",
    "cluster": "former VP of Engineering David Luan",
    "note": "executives later hired by Amazon in 2024",
    "url": "https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/david-luan"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "SSI",
    "year": "2024",
    "cluster": "co-founder & Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever (co-led Superalignment)",
    "note": "single stated goal: safe superintelligence, no interim products",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Superintelligence_Inc."
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "Eureka Labs",
    "year": "2024",
    "cluster": "co-founder Andrej Karpathy",
    "note": "AI-native education",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/16/after-tesla-and-openai-andrej-karpathys-startup-aims-to-apply-ai-assistants-to-education/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "Thinking Machines Lab",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "former CTO Mira Murati and former OpenAI leaders",
    "note": "",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/thinking-machines-lab-is-ex-openai-cto-mira-muratis-new-startup"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "OpenAI",
    "to": "Periodic Labs",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "former VP of post-training research Liam Fedus (ChatGPT co-creator)",
    "note": "AI for materials science",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/20/top-openai-google-brain-researchers-set-off-a-300m-vc-frenzy-for-their-startup-periodic-labs/"
  },
  {
    "type": "merge",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Google Brain",
    "year": "2023",
    "cluster": "Google Research's AI unit",
    "note": "merged in to form Google DeepMind",
    "url": "https://deepmind.google/blog/announcing-google-deepmind/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Inflection AI",
    "year": "2022",
    "cluster": "co-founder Mustafa Suleyman + researcher Karén Simonyan",
    "note": "both left for Microsoft AI in 2024",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_AI"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Mistral AI",
    "year": "2023",
    "cluster": "research scientist Arthur Mensch (Chinchilla co-author)",
    "note": "Paris open-weight lab; see also the Meta edge",
    "url": "https://builtin.com/articles/mistral-ai"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Udio",
    "year": "2023",
    "cluster": "former generative-audio researchers",
    "note": "music generation",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udio"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "H (Holistic AI)",
    "year": "2024",
    "cluster": "four former DeepMind scientists",
    "note": "Paris agentic-AI startup",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_%28company%29"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Reflection AI",
    "year": "2024",
    "cluster": "former researchers Misha Laskin & Ioannis Antonoglou",
    "note": "open-model frontier lab",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/09/reflection-raises-2b-to-be-americas-open-frontier-ai-lab-challenging-deepseek/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Latent Labs",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "protein-design team co-lead Simon Kohl",
    "note": "AI protein design",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/12/founded-by-deepmind-alumnus-latent-labs-launches-with-50m-to-make-biology-programmable"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Google DeepMind",
    "to": "Discovery Loop",
    "year": "2026",
    "cluster": "departing Alphabet chief scientist Jeff Dean",
    "note": "announced alongside the Hassabis transition",
    "url": "https://the-decoder.com/google-deepmind-loses-both-its-ceo-and-chief-scientist-as-demis-hassabis-and-jeff-dean-step-down-simultaneously/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "Fireworks AI",
    "year": "2022",
    "cluster": "PyTorch leadership incl. senior engineering director Lin Qiao",
    "note": "inference infrastructure",
    "url": "https://gcn.com/fireworks-ai-series-d-billion-valuation/20350/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "Perplexity AI",
    "year": "2022",
    "cluster": "co-founder/CTO Denis Yarats (ex-FAIR research scientist)",
    "note": "partial fission",
    "url": "https://www.forbes.com/profile/denis-yarats/"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "Mistral AI",
    "year": "2023",
    "cluster": "LLaMA researchers Guillaume Lample & Timothée Lacroix (Paris)",
    "note": "second parent of Mistral — see the DeepMind edge",
    "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistral_AI"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "EvolutionaryScale",
    "year": "2023",
    "cluster": "the ESM protein team's founding staff of eight, leaving together",
    "note": "after Meta disbanded the unit",
    "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/08/25/evolutionaryscale-ai-biotech-startup-meta-researchers-funding/"
  },
  {
    "type": "merge",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "Scale AI (49% / CEO)",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "annotation vendor; its CEO Alexandr Wang became Meta's Chief AI Officer",
    "note": "$14.3B for 49%",
    "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/30/mark-zuckerberg-creating-meta-superintelligence-labs-read-the-memo.html"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "Meta AI",
    "to": "AMI Labs",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "chief AI scientist & FAIR founding director Yann LeCun",
    "note": "announced departure Nov 2025 to found his own lab",
    "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/19/meta-chief-ai-scientist-yann-lecun-is-leaving-the-company-.html"
  },
  {
    "type": "merge",
    "from": "xAI",
    "to": "X Corp",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "the social platform",
    "note": "all-stock deal forming X.AI Holdings",
    "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/elon-musk-says-xai-has-acquired-x-in-deal-that-values-social-media-site-at-33-billion.html"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "xAI",
    "to": "Babuschkin Ventures",
    "year": "2025",
    "cluster": "co-founder Igor Babuschkin",
    "note": "venture firm funding AI-safety research",
    "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/13/elon-musks-xai-loses-co-founder-igor-babuschkin-for-venture-firm.html"
  },
  {
    "type": "merge",
    "from": "xAI",
    "to": "SpaceX (收購 xAI)",
    "year": "2026",
    "cluster": "all-stock acquisition",
    "note": "xAI valued at $250B inside a $1.25T combined company",
    "url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/02/elon-musk-spacex-xai-ipo.html"
  },
  {
    "type": "split",
    "from": "xAI",
    "to": "unnamed startup (three engineers)",
    "year": "2026",
    "cluster": "three departing engineers incl. model-behavior post-training",
    "note": "name and focus undisclosed in reporting",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/13/elon-musk-suggests-spate-of-xai-exits-have-been-push-not-pull/"
  }
]