Moonshot AI 17-year-old researcher Chen Guangyu resigns, rumored to join US AI company Discovery Loop

According to Yonhap News Agency, 17-year-old researcher Chen Guangyu, who previously contributed to the development of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model, has departed. A social media account tracking U.S. AI talent mobility, named "Aper Grok," reported that he has joined Discovery Loop. Chen himself has not publicly confirmed his next destination, while Discovery Loop declined to comment on personal matters. Starting in November 2025, Chen served as a machine learning researcher on the Kimi team, deeply involved in the research and development of the Kimi K3's underlying architecture. On social media, he thanked the company for hiring him at age 16 and stated that he would relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area. Rumors had suggested he might join Anthropic, but he has denied them. Established in August of this year by Jeff Dean and three other former Google researchers, Discovery Loop is dedicated to automating scientific research with AI and has yet to launch any products.