Social media giant Meta has “poached” three OpenAI researchers to join its mission to develop superintelligent systems, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta has hired Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai, who were responsible for establishing OpenAI’s office in Zurich, Switzerland last year.
If accurate, this move represents another step by Meta to strengthen its internal talent pool as it aims to keep pace with competitors.
Meta recently invested $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, an AI start-up that assists businesses in creating their own AI models. Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has stepped down and will now lead Meta’s new “superintelligence” unit.
Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, reportedly attempted to acquire Safe Superintelligence (SSI), an AI start-up co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, valued at approximately $32 billion during its funding round. The acquisition offer was rejected.
Meta is now focusing on recruiting SSI co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to strengthen its new superintelligence lab, led by Alexandr Wang.
Altman Allegations
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has alleged that Meta Platforms Inc offered signing incentives of up to $100 million to lure top talent from OpenAI, a move he called “crazy” and reflective of intensifying rivalry within the AI industry.
On a podcast with his brother Jack Altman, he said, “They’ve started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
Altman credited OpenAI’s robust culture and mission-driven focus for retaining his team, stating that employees believe OpenAI has a stronger chance of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), thereby increasing its value. He criticised Meta’s compensation-first strategy, arguing that it fails to foster a strong culture or support long-term innovation.
Meta’s Poaching Attempts
Meta is aggressively pursuing top AI talent, attempting to poach OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google DeepMind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu, though both efforts were unsuccessful.
Despite these setbacks, Meta has successfully recruited researchers such as Jack Rae from Google DeepMind and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI to bolster its new “superintelligence” team, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.
However, Altman remains sceptical of Meta’s strategy, stating, “Meta’s current AI efforts have not worked as well as they hoped.” He emphasised that “it’s not enough to catch up, you have to actually innovate.”
He attributes OpenAI’s ability to retain talent, despite Meta’s offers of up to $ 100 million in signing bonuses, to its strong culture and mission-driven focus on achieving AGI. This highlights intense competition and differing approaches in the AI industry, with Meta betting on high-profile hires and investments to close the gap with leaders such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
