This Week’s Top Talent Pools
Reflection AI, the Brooklyn lab building frontier open-weight models, is in talks for Nvidia to acquire it outright or deepen its existing stake, the Financial Times reported. No terms have been reached and the talks are early; the outcome could be an acqui-hire, more chips, or simply a larger equity position. Nvidia led Reflection's $2B round at an $8B valuation in October 2025, putting in roughly $800M alongside Eric Schmidt, Citi, 1789 Capital, DST, Lightspeed, B Capital, Disruptive and Zoom founder Eric Yuan.
Irwan B. in United States (Stealth)
Role: Founding Team @ ReflectionAI (2 yrs)
Other Experience: Founding Team @ CharacterAI ($193M from A16Z, Lightspeed, SV Angel, Greylock), Member of Technical Staff @ OpenAI, Research Scientist @ Google, Research Assistant @ Stanford University
Description: Stealth since 4/26
Aakanksha Chowdhery in SF (Founder @ Continuo Labs AI)
Role: Research Leader @ Reflection AI (1.5 yrs)
Other Experience: Adjunct Professor @ Stanford University, Senior Staff Research Scientist @ Meta, Staff Research Scientist @ Google DeepMind, Stanford University
Description: Building since 9/26
Jon Hackmann in Charleston (Potential Founder)
Role: Chief of Staff @ Reflection AI (1.5 yrs)
Other Experience: Head of BizOps @ Kognitos, GM, Marketplace Operations @ Shiftsmart
Description: Left Reflection on 10/26
Anthony Belfiore in Brentwood (Potential Founder)
Role: Chief Operating Officer @ Reflection AI (<1 yr)
Other Experience: Chief Strategy Officer @ Wiz (acquired by Google for $32B), Chief Security Officer @ Aon, Managing Director @ JPMorgan Chase, Managing Director @ UBS, Loyola University Maryland
Description: Left Reflection AI on 10/26
Decagon has reportedely hired an investment bank to gauge acquisition interest and held early-stage talks with several potential buyers, Business Insider reported. The price context: it was last valued at $4.5B on a $250M Series D on 28 January 2026 co-led by Coatue Management and Index Ventures, triple its valuation six months earlier, and it disclosed $100M+ ARR in August, which Jefferies puts at roughly 45 times ARR, a premium to recent software deals.
Sangwoo Bae in SF Bay Area (Potential Founder)
Role: FTE #2 & Member of Technical Staff @ Decagon (2 yrs)
Other Experience: Engineering Manager @ Scale AI
Description: Left Decagon in 2026 with no updates
Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on 12 October, five years after launch, to run a court-supervised sale of substantially all its assets. Disney is the stalking-horse bidder at $20M, buying a non-exclusive perpetual license to certain intellectual property plus company claims, with transition services to be performed by former Character.AI employees Disney has already hired. The company raised more than $193M from Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and Greycroft, and hit unicorn status on a $150M round in 2022. It reported 20 million monthly active users in October 2024..
Irwan B. in United States (Stealth)
Role: Founding Team @ Character.AI (1 yr)
Other Experience: Founding Team @ ReflectionAI ($2B at $8B led by Nvidia), Member of Technical Staff @ OpenAI, Research Scientist @ Google, Research Assistant @ Stanford University
Description: Stealth since 4/26
James Groeneveld in SF (Potential Founder)
Role: Chief Architect @ Character.AI (4 yrs)
Other Experience: Software Engineer @ Google, Software Engineer @ BCG Digital Ventures, Founding Team (Engineering) @ Endpoint
Description: Left Character.AI 7/26 with no updates
Michal Wolski in Brooklyn (Founder @ Cleanser Labs)
Role: Multimodal Research Engineer @ Character.AI (<1 yr)
Other Experience: CTO and Co-Founder @ Bite AI acq by MyFitnessPal, MLE @ The Browser Company
Description: Building since 4/26
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