Almost half of the AI employees surveyed by Movchan Agency say they are actively looking for a new job, while many report discussing concerns with colleagues that they have not raised with leadership.
The agency surveyed 1,000 employees working at foundation model labs, AI start-ups and infrastructure companies. Among respondents, 45% said they were job hunting and 87% said they would leave for a company with a more honest public position.
A retention challenge beyond pay
The findings point to a potential connection between employee trust and retention in a sector competing for specialist talent. They describe respondents’ stated intentions, rather than measured resignations or predictions of how many people will leave.
Some 81% said they had discussed company concerns with colleagues without raising them directly with leadership; 44% said this happened regularly. Meanwhile, 72% said they would follow a senior colleague who resigned citing safety concerns.
For HR teams, the practical question is whether employees have a credible route to raise concerns before those concerns become a reason to seek work elsewhere. A survey response alone cannot show what is happening inside any particular employer.
Transparency as part of the working culture
Neal Lathia, co-founder and CTO of Gradient Labs, an AI customer operations platform for financial services, said the company’s work in a regulated sector shaped its approach to transparency.
“When engineers understand and appreciate that external auditors will review their work, they become more realistic and accurate in their decisions early in the process.”
Neal Lathia, co-founder and CTO at Gradient Labs
Lathia said that building AI for banks means being able to justify decisions, and argued that transparency should be designed into products from the outset. His comments were supplied alongside the survey.
How to read the findings
Movchan Agency says the survey launched in mid-September 2026 and was completed by 1,000 AI company employees. Its published methodology does not specify the respondents’ geographic distribution, recruitment method or weighting. The results therefore offer a snapshot of this respondent group and should not be treated as representative of every AI worker or of the UK workforce.
Read Movchan Agency’s full findings and methodology.
Image: AI-generated editorial illustration of technology colleagues discussing workplace concerns.
