44% of career moves in the directory go from one university to another

The career records hold 4,709 moves by 1,191 people, from 1949 to 2027. 69% of them start at a university.

A move is a person starting at a new organization. It includes full moves and positions taken while the person kept an earlier one, such as a professor who joins a company. Moves count top-level organizations, so a move to Google DeepMind counts as a move to Google.

A flow diagram of 4709 career moves between five kinds of organization. 69% of moves start at a university.

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Data table

From \ to	University	Company	Lab	Nonprofit	Government	All
University	2,049	579	146	225	230	3,229
Company	281	361	27	51	40	760
Lab	67	26	11	10	15	129
Nonprofit	161	46	13	24	25	269
Government	184	36	16	20	66	322

The largest group is moves from one university to another, with 2,049. Moves from universities to companies outnumber moves the other way: 579 against 281.

Stacked columns of moves per decade from the 1950s to the 2020s, split into university to company, company to university and all other moves.

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Data table

Decade	University to company	Company to university	All other moves	All moves
1950s	2	3	18	23
1960s	1	4	36	41
1970s	3	2	117	122
1980s	36	15	268	319
1990s	77	29	493	599
2000s	92	63	862	1,017
2010s	224	85	1,223	1,532
2020s	143	80	832	1,055

The early decades have fewer moves because the directory has fewer people with careers that start then. The share of moves from universities to companies is a better measure of change over time.

Net flow

Net flow counts full moves only: moves in minus moves out. A position taken while the person kept an earlier one does not count.

Bars to the right show organizations with more full moves in than out; bars to the left show more moves out than in.

Source: People of Superintelligence career records from biographies and OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Data table

Organization	Full moves in	Full moves out	Net
Google	83	63	20
Meta	35	21	14
Anthropic	12	0	12
European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems	12	0	12
Max Planck Society	17	6	11
University of Southern California	26	15	11
RIKEN	16	6	10
University of Texas at Austin	15	7	8
Stanford University	70	100	-30
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	65	91	-26
University of California, Berkeley	51	68	-17
Harvard University	18	30	-12
University of Pennsylvania	17	29	-12
Yale University	9	20	-11
University of Toronto	13	23	-10
Brown University	5	14	-9

Most common paths

The 10 pairs of organizations with the most moves from the first to the second.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology → University of California, Berkeley105 full, 5 alongside
2. Stanford University → University of California, Berkeley94 full, 5 alongside
3. University of Tokyo → RIKEN94 full, 5 alongside
4. University of California, Berkeley → Google93 full, 6 alongside
5. University of Washington → Allen Institute for AI (Ai2)90 full, 9 alongside
6. Google → OpenAI86 full, 2 alongside
7. Microsoft → Google87 full, 1 alongside
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology → Carnegie Mellon University86 full, 2 alongside
9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology → Stanford University87 full, 1 alongside
10. SRI International → Stanford University83 full, 5 alongside