Meta's AI Strategy Shift: From Open-Source Champion to Talent Poacher

Meta built its AI reputation on openness -- that may be changing | TechCrunch

Top members of Meta's new Superintelligence Lab discussed pivoting away from the company's powerful open-source AI model, Behemoth, and instead developing a closed model, reports The New York Times. Sources told The Times that Meta had completed training on Behemoth, but delayed its release due to underwhelming internal performance. When the new Superintelligence Lab launched, testing on the model reportedly halted. The discussions are just that - discussions. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg would still need to sign off on any changes, and a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Meta's position on open source AI is "unchanged." "We plan to continue releasing leading open source models," the spokesperson said. "We haven't released everything we've developed historically and we expect to continue training a mix of open and closed models going forward." The spokesperson did not comment on Meta's potential shift away from Behemoth. If that happens so that Meta can prioritize closed-source models, it would mark a major philosophical change for the company. While Meta deploys more advanced closed-source models internally, like those powering its Meta AI assistant, Zuckerberg had made open source a central part of the company's external AI strategy -- a way to keep AI development moving faster. He loudly positioned the Llama family's openness as a differentiator from competitors like OpenAI, which Zuckerberg publicly criticized for becoming more closed after partnering with Microsoft. But Meta is under pressure to monetize beyond ads as it pours billions into AI. That includes paying massive signing bonuses and nine-figure salaries to poach top researchers, building out new data centers, and covering the enormous costs of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), or "superintelligence." Despite having one of the top AI research labs in the world, Meta still lags behind rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI when it comes to commercializing its AI work. If Meta prioritizes closed models, it could suggest that openness was a strategic play, not an ideological one. Past comments from Zuckerberg hint at an ambivalence toward committing to open sourcing Meta's models. On a podcast last summer, he said: "We're obviously very pro open source, but I haven't committed to releasing every single thing that we do. I'm basically very inclined to think that open sourcing is going to be good for the community and also good for us because we'll benefit from the innovations. If at some point, however, there's some qualitative change in what the thing is capable of, and we feel like it's not responsible to open source it, then we won't. It's all very difficult to predict." Closed models would give Meta more control and more ways to monetize - especially if it believes the talent it has acquired can deliver competitive, best-in-class performance. Such a shift could also reshape the AI landscape. Open-source momentum, largely driven by Meta and models like Llama, could slow, even as OpenAI gears up to release its still-delayed open model. Power could swing back toward the major players with closed ecosystems, while open-source development might remain a product of grassroots efforts. The ripple effects would continue across the startup ecosystem, especially for smaller companies focused on fine-turning, safety, and model alignment that rely on access to open foundation models. On the world stage, Meta's retreat from open source could potentially cede ground to China, which has embraced open-source AI - like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI - as a way to build domestic capability and global influence.

Another High-Profile OpenAI Researcher Departs for Meta

OpenAI researcher Jason Wei is joining Meta's new superintelligence lab, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Wei worked on OpenAI's o3 and deep research models, according to his personal website. He joined OpenAI in 2023 after a stint at Google, where he worked on chain-of-thought research, which involves training an AI model to process complex queries step-by-step. At OpenAI, Wei became a self-described "diehard" for reinforcement learning, a method of training or refining an AI model with positive or negative feedback. It's become a promising area of AI research -- one that several of the researchers Meta has hired for its superintelligence team specialize in. One source tells WIRED that another OpenAI researcher, Hyung Won Chung, will also be joining Meta. Multiple sources confirm that both Wei and Chung's internal OpenAI Slack profiles are currently deactivated. OpenAI, Meta, Wei, and Chung did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED. Chung worked on some of the same projects at OpenAI as Wei, including deep research and OpenAI's o1 model, according to Chung's personal website. His research is primarily focused on reasoning and agents, the website says. Chung overlapped with Wei at Google as well, and joined OpenAI at the same time as Wei, per their LinkedIn profiles. Multiple sources tell WIRED that Wei and Chung have a close working relationship. Meta has previously poached groups of researchers that have experience working together for its new superintelligence lab, including a trio from OpenAI's Switzerland office that joined the ChatGPT maker from Google. Meta has been going on a poaching spree over the past month, offering up to $300 million over four years to top AI talent. WIRED reported late last month that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent an internal memo to staff that laid out a fresh plan for the company's AI efforts. It included a list of new staffers for the superintelligence team, most of whom had been recruited from OpenAI. The hiring frenzy shows no signs of slowing down, and OpenAI has been fighting back. Just last week, WIRED reported that OpenAI had recruited four high-ranking engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta. On Tuesday, Wei shared a post on social media reflecting on what he called "an important lesson" that reinforcement learning taught him "about how to live my own life." In life, (and when building AI models), imitation is good and you have to do it at first, Wei wrote. But "beating the teacher requires walking your own path and taking risks and rewards from the environment."

Meta Hires Two Key Apple AI Experts After Poaching Their Boss

Meta Platforms Inc. hired a pair of key artificial intelligence researchers who worked at Apple Inc., shortly after poaching their former boss from the iPhone maker. The social networking giant hired Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Lee has started at Meta after leaving Apple in recent days, while Gunter will begin work in the near future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the hires haven't been announced.

Meta hires two Apple AI researchers for Superintelligence push, Bloomberg News reports

July 17 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab has hired Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab artificial intelligence researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, as it intensifies its pursuit for top AI talent. The social media giant is among several technology companies that have struck high-profile deals and doled out multi-million-dollar pay packages to fast-track development of machines that could surpass humans intelligence. Lee recently left Apple and has started at Meta, while Gunter is set to join soon, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Their exit follows Ruoming Pang, who previously left Apple for a multi-million-dollar compensation package at Meta, according to a media report earlier this month. Lee and Gunter both worked closely with Pang, the Bloomberg report said on Thursday. Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features, sources have told Reuters. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the report, while Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that his social media platform would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers. In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive talent raid in the pursuit to create a division called Superintelligence Labs. Reporting by Abu Sultan and Kanjyik Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Sherry Jacob-Phillips Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta hires two Apple AI researchers after poaching their boss, Bloomberg reports

July 17 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab has hired Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab AI researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, Bloomberg news reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Lee has started at Meta after leaving Apple in recent days, while Gunter will begin work in the near future, the report said. Reuters couldn't immediately verify the report. Reporting by Abu Sultan in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta's New Superintelligence Lab Is Discussing Major A.I. Strategy Changes

Meta's newly formed superintelligence lab has discussed making a series of changes to the company's artificial intelligence strategy, in what would amount to a major shake-up at the social media giant. Last week, a small group of top members of the lab, including Alexandr Wang, 28, Meta's new chief A.I. officer, discussed abandoning the company's most powerful open source A.I. model, called Behemoth, in favor of developing a closed model, two people with knowledge of the matter said. For years, Meta has chosen to open source its A.I. models, which means it makes the computer code public for other developers to build on. Closed models keep their underlying code private. Meta executives have long argued it is better for the technology to be built in public so that A.I. development will move faster and be accessible to more developers. Any move toward a closed A.I. model would be a philosophical change at Meta as much as a technical one. Meta has won plaudits from developers for open sourcing its A.I. models and one of its top A.I. executives, Yann LeCun, had said "the platform that will win will be the open one." This year, the Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek released an advanced A.I. chatbot thanks in part to Meta's open source code. Meta had finished feeding in data to improve its Behemoth model, a process known as "training," but has delayed its release because of poor internal performance, said the people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to discuss private conversations. After the company announced the formation of the superintelligence lab last month, teams working on the Behemoth model -- which is known as a "frontier" model -- stopped running new tests on it, one of the people said. The superintelligence lab's discussions are preliminary and no decisions have been made on potential changes, which would need sign-off from Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive. Meta could keep its open source A.I. models while prioritizing a closed model. If these scenarios happen, they would be a significant shift for the company as it tries to stay competitive in the A.I. race against rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. A Meta spokesman declined to comment on the superintelligence lab's discussions. In a podcast interview last year, Mr. Zuckerberg said, "We're obviously very pro open source, but I haven't committed to releasing every single thing that we do." Meta's superintelligence lab is being closely watched after the company recently stumbled with A.I. technology, including internal management struggles, employee churn and product releases that fell flat. Mr. Zuckerberg's ultimate goal is to create A.I. that is "superintelligent," which means it would hypothetically exceed the powers of the human brain. Mr. Zuckerberg has embarked on a spending spree to create the new lab, offering as much as nine-figure pay packages to hire top researchers from companies like OpenAI, Google, Apple and Anthropic. Meta also sidelined its executive who had been leading generative A.I. In June, the company made a $14.3 billion investment in the A.I. start-up Scale AI, which was founded and led by Mr. Wang. Under the deal, Meta took a 49 percent stake in the company, and Mr. Wang and a team of top Scale employees joined Meta in leadership roles. The company has since renamed its entire A.I. division "Meta Superintelligence Labs," with Mr. Wang as chief A.I. officer. Within the larger A.I. division, Mr. Wang has led an exclusive team of around a dozen newly hired researchers, a handful of his deputies from Scale AI, and Nat Friedman, the former chief executive of GitHub, a software start-up. Many members of Mr. Wang's team reported to Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., last week for the first time, the two people with knowledge of the matter said. The group is working in an office space siloed from the rest of the company and next to Mr. Zuckerberg, the people said. On Tuesday, Mr. Wang held a question-and-answer session with Meta's A.I. workers, who number about 2,000. In the meeting, he said the work of his small team would be private, but Meta's entire A.I. division would now be working toward creating superintelligence, the people with knowledge of the matter said. He did not address whether A.I. models would be open or closed. In August, at the end of the company's next vesting period, which is when some workers are able to sell portions of their stock, some employees expect an exodus of A.I. talent who were not chosen to join Mr. Wang's superintelligence team, one of the people with knowledge of the matter said.

Zuckerberg Isn't Done Stealing OpenAI's Crown Jewels

Sam Altman is not mad. Do not put in the newspaper that he got mad. The battle between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI's Sam Altman for the industry's top AI talent shows no signs of cooling off. This time, Zuckerberg appears to have secured two more researchers from OpenAI. Citing unnamed sources close to the matter, Wired reports that OpenAI researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung are making their way over to Meta. While at OpenAI, Wei worked on OpenAI's o3 and deep research models. Chung also worked on the company's deep research models with his research focusing on reasoning and agents. Meta and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo. While neither Wei or Chung have publicly confirmed the move, they both recently posted cryptic messages on their X (formerly Twitter) profiles. Wei wrote that his research in reinforcement learning (RL), a method for training AI, has taught him "an important lesson" about how to live his own life. "The lesson of doing RL on policy is that beating the teacher requires walking your own path and taking risks and rewards from the environment," he wrote. Wei also reposted a video lecture that Chung uploaded to his X profile early this morning. In the caption, Chung muses on how AI can be leveraged to boost productivity. "It's cliché to say AI will create massive wealth," Chung wrote. "But using this leverage lens lets us interpret the noisy AI news cycle in a consistent way and spot the real opportunities." Both researchers also did time at Google before joining OpenAI, adding to the growing trend of talent flowing from Google to OpenAI to Meta. Back in June, Meta scooped up three researchers from OpenAI's Zurich office, all of whom were Google alums. So far, Meta has managed to recruit at least 11 former OpenAI employees. Meta's recent hiring spree is part of a broader push to strengthen its AI efforts following the underwhelming launch of its latest model. Zuckerberg has reportedly offered pay packages worth up to $100 million to attract top talent to his new superintelligence lab. Meta has also recently invested $14 billion in the AI startup Scale and tapped its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to help lead the lab. Zuckerberg reportedly even tried -- and failed -- to recruit OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman.

Meta just poached two more AI researchers from Apple - 9to5Mac

Just days after hiring Ruoming Pang, who had led Apple's foundation model efforts, Meta is reuniting him with two former colleagues from Cupertino. As reported by Bloomberg, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, both key members of Apple's Foundation Models (AFM) group, are joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs team: Lee was known as Pang's first hire at Apple, while Gunter, who was a distinguished engineer at Apple, was regarded as one of the group's most senior employees. Lee had reportedly recently left Apple, and has already started at Meta. Meanwhile, Gunter departed last month, and briefly joined another AI startup before deciding to head to Menlo Park. The new hires follow the high-profile departure of Ruoming Pang, the former head of large language models at Apple, who reportedly joined Meta on a compensation package worth more than $200 million over the next several years. At the time, Bloomberg reported that other senior members of Apple's AI team could soon follow. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently declared that AI is Meta's top priority, and these moves underscore just how aggressive its recruitment push has become. The company had been steadily pulling top AI talent from direct competitors like OpenAI and Google, but now it appears to be capitalizing on Apple's internal drama, as it still debates whether to stick with in-house models or adopt third-party options for Siri and other AI features. Meanwhile, morale among Apple's AI teams is reportedly slipping, as engineers feel scapegoated for the recent high-profile fumbles. Now, Meta appears to be seizing the moment to lure away disillusioned engineers before Apple can stabilize the situation.

Meta Poaches Two More Apple AI Executives

After poaching one of Apple's top artificial intelligence executives with a $200 million pay package to lure him away from the company, Meta has now hired two of his subordinates, Bloomberg reports. Apple's Mark Lee and Tom Gunter are set to join Meta's Superintelligence Labs team, a newly established division tasked with building advanced AI systems capable of performing at or beyond human-level intelligence. Earlier this month, Ruoming Pang joined Meta. Until recently, he led Apple's foundation models team. Models developed by Pang's team are used for Apple Intelligence features like email summaries, Priority Notifications, and Genmoji. Lee was Pang's first hire at Apple, while Gunter was apparently known as one of the team's most senior members. Meta has been spending heavily on new staff and engineers to keep up with advancements from OpenAI and Google. Apple is reportedly now offering some engineers raises in an effort to retain them, but they are still substantially less than Meta's offers. Bloomberg notes that the three departures "reflect the continuing turmoil at the Apple Foundation Models team." Apple is now believed to be considering a major change of strategy by using external models from the likes of OpenAI or Anthropic to power Siri and other Apple Intelligence features due to the shortcomings of its own models. Apple is simultaneously developing versions with both its own models and third-party technology, and has not yet decided which to use as the foundation for Apple Intelligence beginning next year.

Meta Plans to Abandon Llama 4 Behemoth. But Why? | AIM

The company is reportedly focusing on building a closed source model instead. Meta has reportedly considered abandoning the Llama 4 Behemoth, according to a July 14 report by the New York Times. The report indicates that a small group of senior staff at Meta's newly announced superintelligence lab are now believed to be developing a closed-source model instead. The Llama 4 Behemoth is currently the company's biggest and most powerful AI model that has been announced. According to the NYT report, Meta has completed training the Behemoth model but delayed its release due to 'poor internal performance'. And after Meta announced the superintelligence lab last month, teams working on the model stopped running tests on it. Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the tech giant delayed the rollout of the model, 'prompting concerns about the direction of its multi-billion dollar AI investments." These individuals also told the publication that Meta's engineers and researchers were concerned that its performance would not match the public statements made about its capabilities. The model was expected to be released later this year. However, recent updates suggest that a release is now unlikely anytime soon. If Meta develops a closed-source model, it would represent a significant departure from the company's long-standing approach of creating open-source AI models. In April, the company introduced the Llama 4 family of AI models, which includes three variants: Behemoth, Maverick, and Scout. The Behemoth is the largest, with a total of 2 trillion parameters. Meta dubbed the model as one of the most innovative AI models in the world. More recently, Meta intensified its focus on building a team for its superintelligence initiatives. Besides assembling a team led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and recruiting several others from OpenAI, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centres for these efforts. Despite these efforts to stay ahead of competitors, why is the company planning to abandon the Behemoth model? SemiAnalysis, one of the world's leading AI and semiconductor research companies, outlined some of the reasons in its latest report. Semianalysis suggests that Meta's decision to use the chunked attention technique for memory efficiency may have been a mistake. Standard attention allows every token to access all previous tokens, forming a complete context. Chunked attention splits tokens into fixed blocks, limiting each token's attention to only its current block. "Behemoth's implementation of chunked attention chasing efficiency created blind spots, especially at block boundaries," read the report from SemiAnalysis. Each divided chunk can access tokens within its own block, but not those in the preceding block. Therefore, if a logical argument or chain of thought extends from one chunk to another, the model loses the connection. This weakened the model's ability to follow and reason across long chains of thought. "We believe part of the problem was that Meta didn't even have the proper long context evaluations or testing infrastructure set up to determine that chunked attention would not work for developing a reasoning model," added the report. SemiAnalysis also said that Meta is 'very far behind on RL and internal evaluations' and the new superintelligence team is set to close the gap. Besides, the report added that Meta's Behemoth model switched its Mixture of Experts routing method midway through training, disrupting how its expert networks specialised. This led to instabilities, ultimately limiting the model's overall effectiveness. Among other reasons, SemiAnalysis also states that Llama 4 Behemoth faced bottlenecks with regard to training data. "Prior to Llama 4 Behemoth, Meta had been using public data (like Common Crawl), but switched mid-run to an internal web crawler they built. While this is generally superior, it also backfired," read the report, stating that Meta struggled to clean and deduplicate the new data stream. "The processes hadn't been stress-tested at scale." The report further notes that Meta also struggled to scale research experiments into full-fledged training runs. The company had to deal with competing research directions and a lack of leadership to decide the most productive path for the model. "Certain model architecture choices did not have proper ablations but were thrown into the model. This led to poorly managed scaling ladders," said the report.

Meta Poaches Two AI Researchers From Apple in Hiring Spree | AIM

Meta has employed two significant AI researchers who previously worked at Apple, shortly after luring away their former supervisor from the iPhone company, Bloomberg reported. The social media giant has brought on Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team. Lee has already joined Meta, while Gunter is expected to start soon, according to the report. These actions are part of a competitive effort to attract AI talent across the technology sector. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is particularly proactive in its recruitment initiatives. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has prioritised AI within the organisation, investing heavily in personnel and data centres to match competitors like OpenAI and Google. Gunter departed from Apple last month, as reported by Bloomberg at that time, and both he and Lee collaborated closely with Ruoming Pang, who leads Apple's LLMs team and was recruited by Meta earlier this month. According to the report, Meta proposed a compensation package worth well over $200 million for multiple years to hire Pang. Lee was recognised as Pang's first hire at Apple, while Gunter, who held the title of distinguished engineer at Apple, was seen as one of the most experienced members of the team. Gunter joined another AI company following his exit from Apple and left that position recently. Earlier this year, Meta recruited three researchers from OpenAI to support its efforts to develop superintelligent systems, as reported by AIM. The three newly hired researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, were instrumental in establishing OpenAI's office in Zurich, Switzerland, the previous year. The company has reportedly been offering exceptionally high compensation packages to OpenAI employees, which may include signing bonuses of $100 million or more, as mentioned by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Meta raids Apple's AI talent pool

Meta has strengthened its AI research team by hiring Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, both former members of Apple's Foundation Models group, shortly after recruiting Ruoming Pang. According to a report from Bloomberg, Mark Lee, who was the first hire of Ruoming Pang at Apple, and Tom Gunter, a distinguished engineer and senior member of the group, have joined Meta's Superintelligence Labs. Lee has already commenced his role, while Gunter departed from Apple last month after briefly working at another AI startup. Pang, previously the head of large language models at Apple, reportedly joined Meta with a compensation package exceeding $200 million. His departure has raised speculation about other senior members of Apple's AI team potentially leaving as well. Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized that AI is the company's primary focus, highlighting the aggressive recruitment strategy implemented by the firm. This strategy has targeted AI talent from rival organizations, including OpenAI and Google, and now appears to be leveraging Apple's internal shifts. As Apple wrestles with decisions regarding in-house models versus third-party solutions for Siri and additional AI functionalities, reports indicate that morale among Apple's AI engineers is declining. This situation arises as employees feel blamed for various recent setbacks. Amid this uncertainty, Meta is positioned to attract frustrated engineers before Apple can address its internal issues.

Meta's new Superintelligence Lab is discussing major AI strategy changes - The Economic Times

Meta's new superintelligence lab is considering abandoning its open-source AI model, Behemoth, in favour of developing a closed model, marking a major strategic shift. While no final decision has been made, the move could signal a departure from Meta's long-standing open-source philosophy to better compete in the AI race.Meta's newly formed superintelligence lab has discussed making a series of changes to the company's artificial intelligence strategy, in what would amount to a major shake-up at the social media giant. Last week, a small group of top members of the lab, including Alexandr Wang, 28, Meta's new chief AI officer, discussed abandoning the company's most powerful open source AI model, called Behemoth, in favour of developing a closed model, two people with knowledge of the matter said. For years, Meta has chosen to open-source its AI models, which means it makes the computer code public for other developers to build on. Closed models keep their underlying code private. Meta executives have long argued it is better for the technology to be built in public so that AI development will move faster and be accessible to more developers. Any move toward a closed AI model would be a philosophical change at Meta as much as a technical one. Meta has won plaudits from developers for open-sourcing its AI models, and one of its top AI executives, Yann LeCun, had said, "The platform that will win will be the open one." This year, Chinese AI company DeepSeek released an advanced AI chatbot thanks in part to Meta's open source code. Meta had finished feeding in data to improve its Behemoth model, a process known as "training," but has delayed its release because of poor internal performance, said the people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to discuss private conversations. After the company announced the formation of the superintelligence lab last month, teams working on the Behemoth model -- which is known as a "frontier" model -- stopped running new tests on it, one of the people said. The superintelligence lab's discussions are preliminary, and no decisions have been made on potential changes, which would need sign-off from Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's CEO. Meta could keep its open-source AI models while prioritizing a closed model. If these scenarios happen, they will be a significant shift for the company as it tries to stay competitive in the AI race against rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Meta hires two Apple AI researchers after poaching their boss: Bloomberg - The Economic Times

Meta has hired Apple AI researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, according to Bloomberg. Lee has already joined, while Gunter is set to start soon.Meta Platforms has hired Apple AI researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter for its Superintelligence Labs team, Bloomberg news reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. Lee has started at Meta after leaving Apple in recent days, while Gunter will begin work in the near future, the report said. Reuters couldn't immediately verify the report.

Meta's Superintelligence Lab Contemplates AI Strategy Overhaul, Including Abandoning Open Source Model: Report - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Meta Platforms Inc. META is reportedly considering a major shift in its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy, including the potential abandonment of its open-source AI model, Behemoth. What Happened: The newly formed Superintelligence Lab at Meta, led by 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, the company's new Chief AI Officer, is contemplating a shift from the open-source Behemoth model to a closed model, reported The New York Times. The lab's discussions are in the early stages, and decisions are yet to be made. However, any changes would require approval from Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the report said. Check out the current price of META stock here. Meta's open-source AI models have been a cornerstone of its AI strategy, with the company arguing that open-sourcing the technology would accelerate AI development and make it more accessible to developers. Moving to a closed A.I. model would represent a major philosophical shift for the company. The potential shift comes after Meta faced challenges with the Behemoth model's internal performance, leading to a delay in its release. Despite these challenges, Meta may continue supporting its open-source AI models while ultimately prioritizing a closed system. Wang recently hosted a Q&A with Meta's AI staff, where he stated that although his team's work would remain private, the entire AI division would now be dedicated to building superintelligence. However, he did not clarify whether the A.I. models would be open or closed. Meta did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment. SEE ALSO: Pudgy Penguins Coin PENGU Leaps Past Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe With 93% Weekly Gain - Benzinga Trending Investment OpportunitiesAdvertisementArrivedBuy shares of homes and vacation rentals for as little as $100. Get StartedWiserAdvisorGet matched with a trusted, local financial advisor for free.Get StartedPoint.comTap into your home's equity to consolidate debt or fund a renovation.Get StartedRobinhoodMove your 401k to Robinhood and get a 3% match on deposits.Get Started Why It Matters: This news comes on the heels of Meta's aggressive push towards AI development. In a recent announcement, Zuckerberg confirmed that the company would invest hundreds of billions to build massive AI clusters in pursuit of superintelligence. Earlier, Meta had embarked on a massive recruitment drive, offering multimillion-dollar packages to assemble an elite AI team for its superintelligence labs. The company even poached talent from other tech giants like OpenAI and Apple Inc. AAPL with remuneration packages that outstripped those of Fortune 500 CEOs and professional sports stars. Furthermore, Meta expanded its AI talent pool by acquiring PlayAI, an AI startup focused on natural-sounding voice technology. The entire PlayAI team joined Meta, further bolstering its AI capabilities. With these moves, Meta strives to remain competitive in the AI race against rivals such as Google GOOG GOOGL, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The company's ultimate goal is to create a "superintelligent" AI, which would hypothetically surpass human cognitive abilities. READ MORE: Mark Zuckerberg Expected To Appear As Star Witness In $8 Billion Trial Over Alleged Privacy Violations Image via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. AAPLApple Inc$208.01-0.29%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum25.11Growth32.39Quality75.55Value9.40Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewGOOGAlphabet Inc$182.45-0.20%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$181.23-0.18%METAMeta Platforms Inc$720.85-0.01%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Poaches Top OpenAI Researchers Jason Wei And Hyung Won Chung For Its Superintelligence Lab: Report - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta Platforms Inc. META has reportedly hired two top researchers from OpenAI -- Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung -- for its ambitious new superintelligence lab. What Happened: Wei and Chung's internal Slack accounts at OpenAI have been deactivated, reported Wired on Tuesday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. Both researchers joined OpenAI in 2023 after working at Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google, where they collaborated on chain-of-thought and deep reasoning research. At OpenAI, Wei focused on reinforcement learning, a growing area in AI that trains models using reward-based feedback. Chung contributed to OpenAI's 'o1' model and specialized in agents and reasoning. See Also: Meta's Metaverse Dreams Tested By New ByteDance Swan Goggles The two are known to have a close working relationship and have frequently worked on overlapping projects. Meta, OpenAI, Wei and Chung did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. Why It's Important: This recruitment comes amid a wave of aggressive AI hiring by Meta, which has reportedly offered compensation packages of up to $300 million over four years to lure talent from rivals, the report said. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also outlined a refreshed AI roadmap and named several high-profile hires from OpenAI to the company's internal superintelligence team. Trending Investment OpportunitiesAdvertisementArrivedBuy shares of homes and vacation rentals for as little as $100. Get StartedWiserAdvisorGet matched with a trusted, local financial advisor for free.Get StartedPoint.comTap into your home's equity to consolidate debt or fund a renovation.Get StartedRobinhoodMove your 401k to Robinhood and get a 3% match on deposits.Get Started Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta reportedly offered nine-figure compensation packages -- around $100 million each -- to poach top OpenAI and Google DeepMind researchers as part of its AI talent drive. However, at the time, Altman stated that "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that." Earlier this week, it was also reported that Meta acquired PlayAI, a startup specializing in natural-sounding voice technology. The financial details weren't disclosed, but the entire PlayAI team will reportedly join Meta this week and report to Johan Schalkwyk, who recently came on board from voice AI firm Sesame AI. Price Action: Meta shares have climbed 18.55% so far this year and gained 45.04% over the past 12 months. On Tuesday, the stock slipped 1.46% during regular trading but edged up 0.070% in after-hours trading, according to Benzinga Pro data. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show that META maintains a steady upward trend across short, medium and long-term periods. Its growth score stays robust, though its value rating is comparatively weaker. More detailed performance insights can be found here. Photo Courtesy: Skorzewiak on Shutterstock.com Read Next: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Expands AI Talent With PlayAI Acquisition: Report Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. GOOGAlphabet Inc$183.300.27%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum33.30Growth86.81Quality85.86Value52.30Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewGOOGLAlphabet Inc$182.000.24%METAMeta Platforms Inc$710.89-1.39%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta Snags Two Key OpenAI Researchers In Latest Talent Grab, Continuing Its Streak Of Poaching Top Minds For Superintelligence Ambitions

There is no doubt that the AI sector seems to be seeing intense competition with companies aggressively working to establish themselves as leading the trend or advancing further in the technology. OpenAI has an ambitious approach to artificial intelligence and has rapidly approached growth and innovation. Still, it is alarming to see many key employees departing from the company. This has been especially the case in the last few months, when many prominent engineers left the company to join Meta. It has now been confirmed that two prominent researchers are also officially moving to be a part of Meta's Superintelligence Lab. OpenAI Researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chun have left for Meta's Superintelligence Lab, joining a wave of high-profile departures Researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung are set to join Meta's Superintelligence Lab, joining the growing list of high-profile AI talents to have exited OpenAI, as highlighted by Wired. This move is of great significance because it highlights the growing competition and race for artificial intelligence leadership, and it seems like now, Meta, with its aggressive approach to AI capabilities, is taking over. Previously, Wei and Chung were part of Google's Brain research group before joining OpenAI in 2023, making this their second major transition within two years. Wei was a key member at OpenAI and was responsible for pushing for the development of o3 and deep research models. His work involved training AI systems to handle complex reasoning, which is quite promising when it comes to AI research. Chung, on the other hand, contributed to the o1 model and deep research as well. While the two have served major companies together, both seem to be transitioning to a new journey, highlighting the pursuit of superintelligent systems and top AI researchers being taken away from OpenAI. Mera's hiring spree appears to be to achieve its goal of building artificial general intelligence, which is why it is currently offering better compensation packages and more resources to build an AI infrastructure. By bringing Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung on board, Meta is showcasing its determination to stay ahead when it comes to pursuing advanced AI development. While there has been sparse information available on the roles the two researchers would be taking on and the compensation they would be offered, we do know that Meta is sending a bold message about its dominance in the push for AGI. OpenAI, on the other hand, seems to be losing its top minds to rivals, and it needs to take immediate action to avoid the ongoing talent migration, for it tends to have a ripple effect across the industry.

Meta Raids Apple's AI Lab With Big Paychecks -- Zuckerberg Bets To Win The AI Race - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Meta Platforms META has intensified its AI talent war by hiring two key former Apple AAPL engineers, Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, for its Superintelligence Labs team. The hires come just weeks after Meta poached their former boss, Ruoming Pang, the ex-head of Apple's large language models team, with a multiyear pay package reportedly worth over $200 million, Bloomberg reported on Friday. On the same day, Meta hired Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin, who previously worked on Claude at Anthropic, according to sources. Also Read: Why Meta's AI Edge Makes It The Top Ad Stock For 2025 Meta's latest hires mark another step in its aggressive push to expand its superintelligence unit. In June, the company also brought in Scale AI's Alexandr Wang, startup founder Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, reportedly with generous compensation packages. Meta recruited seven researchers from OpenAI, including Trapit Bansal and Shuchao Bi, experts in large language models and reinforcement learning. It also hired Jack Rae, a machine learning pioneer, and Huiwen Chang, an image generation specialist, from Alphabet GOOGL Google DeepMind. Lee recently joined Meta, while Gunter -- formerly a distinguished engineer at Apple -- is expected to start soon. After leaving Apple, Gunter briefly joined another AI firm, but left that role recently to join Meta. At Apple, both engineers played central roles in the Apple Foundation Models (AFM) team, which develops the company's core generative AI technologies. Bloomberg's report noted Meta capitalizing on internal uncertainty at Apple, where executives are debating whether to rely on third-party models like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude for Siri and other Apple Intelligence features. This indecision, coupled with relatively lower compensation, has triggered turmoil and exits from Apple's AI group, which comprises about 100 employees. Trending Investment OpportunitiesAdvertisementArrivedBuy shares of homes and vacation rentals for as little as $100. Get StartedWiserAdvisorGet matched with a trusted, local financial advisor for free.Get StartedPoint.comTap into your home's equity to consolidate debt or fund a renovation.Get StartedRobinhoodMove your 401k to Robinhood and get a 3% match on deposits.Get Started Meta has used this window to recruit aggressively, offering pay packages several times higher than Apple's standard compensation. Gunter reportedly joins a growing list of AI experts at Meta who receive over $100 million multi-year deals. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently declared AI the company's top priority and said Meta would invest "hundreds of billions of dollars into compute" to build superintelligence. Meanwhile, Apple has responded by offering raises to key engineers in the AFM team to retain talent. Still, insiders say those increases pale in comparison to Meta's offers. Meta is reportedly rethinking its AI strategy and may adopt a closed system instead of its open-source Behemoth model. Led by newly appointed Chief AI Officer Wang, Meta's Superintelligence Lab is exploring this shift as part of early-stage internal discussions. The reconsideration follows internal challenges with Behemoth's performance, which delayed its release. Meta may still support open models, but could prioritize closed systems in the future. META Price Action: Meta Platforms shares were down 0.15% at $700.39 at the time of publication Friday, according to Benzinga Pro. Read Next: Meta Has Gained 26% In 2025, Can The Rally Continue? Photo: El editorial/Shutterstock METAMeta Platforms Inc$701.820.06%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum85.12Growth92.18Quality86.92Value27.49Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewAAPLApple Inc$211.040.49%GOOGLAlphabet Inc$185.050.80%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

'Zuck Reached Out And We Chatted': Meta Lures Seattle AI Founder With $100M-Plus Offer To Join Its Superintelligence Dream Team - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Matt Deitke, co-founder of Seattle-based AI startup Vercept, has joined Meta's META Superintelligence Lab after receiving a direct offer from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Deitke described the initiative as "the most exciting bet I've seen in tech history," signaling Meta's bold ambitions in artificial general intelligence, GeekWire reports. Deitke brings advanced expertise in embodied AI and 3D computer vision, having previously worked at the Allen Institute for AI and studied at the University of Washington before founding Vercept in 2024, according to GeekWire. Don't Miss: Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target - Many are rushing to grab 4,000 of its pre-IPO shares for just $0.30/share Named a TIME Best Invention and Backed by 5,000+ Users, Kara's Air-to-Water Pod Cuts Plastic and Costs -- And You Can Invest At Just $6.37/Share Pre-IPO Offer: Get A Piece Of A Nearly $5T Global Opportunity By Joining BOXABL As An Early Shareholder At Just $0.80/Share Massive Demand & Disruptive Potential - Boxabl has received interest for over 190,000 homes, positioning itself as a major disruptor in the housing market. Revolutionary Manufacturing Approach - Inspired by Henry Ford's assembly line, Boxabl's foldable tiny homes are designed for high-efficiency production, making homeownership more accessible. Affordable Investment Opportunity - With homes priced at $60,000, Boxabl is raising $1 billion to scale production, offering investors a chance to own a stake in its growth. Share Price: $0.80 Min. Investment: $1,000 Valuation: $3.5B Click Here To Invest For Just $0.80/Share ($1000 Min)Meta Offers Up to $300M Over Four Years to Build the Most Elite AI Team in the World Meta is offering compensation packages worth as much as $300 million over four years to attract elite AI talent for its Superintelligence Lab. According to GeekWire, the first-year payout can exceed $100 million, a figure larger than many startups raise in early rounds. Zuckerberg has stated on Threads that Meta will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars into compute" to support its superintelligence vision. With compensation packages that can dwarf entire seed rounds, companies like Meta can effectively cherry-pick top talent from promising startups, GeekWire reports. Deitke confirmed that Zuckerberg personally reached out and initiated the hiring conversation, which quickly led to an offer. "Zuck reached out and we chatted and I talked to a few people on the team, and shortly after received an offer," he told GeekWire. Trending: $100k+ in investable assets? Match with a fiduciary advisor for free to learn how you can maximize your retirement and save on taxes - no cost, no obligation. Deitke's first day at Meta was Monday, after relocating from Seattle to join the small Superintelligence Lab team, GeekWire reports. He has also updated his LinkedIn to reflect his new role as "AI Researcher @ Meta Superintelligence Lab." Vercept Moves Forward Without Co-Founder but With $16M from Elite Backers Vercept has raised $16 million in seed funding from major names including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, GeekWire says. The company is building Vy, an AI-powered Mac app that understands screens and performs tasks through natural language. Vy is Vercept's flagship native Mac application designed to radically simplify how humans interact with computers. Instead of navigating menus or searching for help articles, Vercept says that users can give natural language commands as Vy understands what's on their screen and takes action intelligently, directly within the software they already use. Early benchmarks on the company website show Vy significantly outperforming competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic on UI understanding and screen navigation tasks. See Also: This AI-Powered Trading Platform Has 5,000+ Users, 27 Pending Patents, and a $43.97M Valuation -- You Can Become an Investor for Just $500.25 Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani confirmed Deitke's departure in a post on X, referencing the "comp rumors" surrounding Meta's offers to top engineers. She noted his early role in shaping Vercept's roadmap and said the team remains "fired up" about the company's future. Ehsani also joked about joining Deitke "on his private island next year," a reference to the rumored compensation scale for Meta's new AI team. Despite leaving, Deitke expressed full confidence in Vercept's continued success, calling the team "absolutely amazing" and telling GeekWire that the direction they are building remains "very exciting." Meta has already brought on top researchers, including OpenAI's Lucas Beyer, Apple's AAPL Ruoming Pang, former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross of Safe Superintelligence, Geekwire says. With plenty of capital and the ability to attract top-tier researchers, Meta's Superintelligence Lab continues to grow as one of the most closely watched AI initiatives in the industry. Read Next: Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $10. Image: Shutterstock METAMeta Platforms Inc$704.150.39%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum85.12Growth92.18Quality86.92Value27.49Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewAAPLApple Inc$211.200.56%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta's Superintelligence Team Currently Comprises Of 44 Employees, With 50 Percent Of Them Hailing From China, And 40 Percent Of The Total Headcount Previously Employed At OpenAI

Mark Zuckerberg can pour in outrageous amounts of cash when it comes to a specific bet in the technology industry, such as investing a mammoth $46 billion in the metaverse, which the majority of people know, did not work out at all. Now, Meta's Chief Executive has been hiring talent left, right, and center and has placed these individuals in its Superintelligence Labs, where teams work on various foundation models as they aim to take the lead in the artificial intelligence race. As for the people working at this division, a detailed list reveals that there are 44 people employed there, and interestingly enough, 50 percent of them are from China, with 40 percent leaving their position at OpenAI, along with other 'eye-opening' finds. A hiring spree is currently underway at Meta, where it has attempted to poach talent from notable firms such as OpenAI, Apple and others by giving them offers they probably cannot refuse. Before recruiting the iPhone maker's head of foundation models that was accompanied by a $200 million signing bonus, Meta had already snatched three former OpenAI employees, with one of them claiming that they did not receive a $100 million signing bonus. While Meta only knows what figure it promised to lure talent, @deedydas got hold of a detailed employee list at the social media giant's Superintelligence Labs, which he claims he got from an anonymous company employee. As mentioned above, 50 percent of the hires are from China, with 75 percent of them being PhDs, while 70 percent of them comprise of researchers. The highest number of hires has come from OpenAI at 40 percent, followed by Google's DeepMind at 20 percent, with 15 percent coming from Scale. In short, Meta has quite a diversified headcount at its Superintelligence Labs, with a majority of them not even completing a whole month at the company. The post on X also mentions that each of these hires are probably clearing between $10-$100 million a year, but that figure has yet to be confirmed. Probably the most notable detail from this list is that 50 percent of the 44 employees are from China, which could put Meta in a difficult position when the Trump administration starts investigating the company for committing any security violations. We will not be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg gets questioned about these Chinese researchers in the future, and we will provide every and all updates in the future, so stay tuned.

Meta Continues AI Focus by Adding 2 Ex-Apple Researchers | PYMNTS.com

The company hired Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, who will join its new Superintelligence Labs team, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 17), citing unnamed sources. Lee has started at Meta, while Gunter will do so shortly, according to the report. Gunter left Apple last month, joined another AI company and will now move to Meta. Both worked closely with Ruoming Pang, who led Apple's large language models team before moving to Meta earlier this month, per the report. Neither Apple nor Meta immediately replied to PYMNTS request for comment. It was reported July 7 that Pang was joining Meta after being offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year and that Pang's departure marked another setback for Apple's AI project and the latest high-profile hire for Meta's Superintelligence group. Meta has been pursuing its AI-focused hiring spree since at least early June, when it was reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was taking a hands-on approach to expanding the company's artificial general intelligence (AGI) team and was recruiting from a pool of AI researchers and engineers who met with him at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto. It was reported at the time that Zuckerberg was frustrated with Meta's limitations in AI and aimed to hire around 50 people to help turn the company into a leader in the field of AGI. On June 30, it was reported that Zuckerberg told Meta staff that he was creating the Superintelligence Labs business unit and that it would be led by some of the company's most recent hires. "I've spent the past few months meeting top folks across Meta, other AI labs, and promising startups to put together the founding group for this small talent-dense effort," Zuckerberg reportedly said in an internal memo. "We're still forming this group and we'll ask several people across the AI org to join this lab as well." Meta is investing in AI infrastructure as well. On Monday (July 14), Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads that the company will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" into that infrastructure.

Zuckerberg's Meta Superintelligence Labs poaches top AI talent in Silicon Valley

(Reuters) -Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars towards building massive data centers, days after ratcheting up the AI race with the launch of a division made up of engineers poached from rivals he hopes to challenge. Zuckerberg has intensified Silicon Valley's talent war through aggressive hiring and startup deals, as he tries to catch up with rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic after the poor performance of the Facebook parent's Llama 4 model. Here is a list of the new recruits at Meta: ALEXANDR WANG Meta hired the former Scale AI CEO to head the new division as chief AI officer, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. Zuckerberg has also hired some Scale AI staff after the company invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup. NAT FRIEDMAN The former GitHub CEO will co-lead the unit with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research. Friedman co-founded venture capital firm NFDG, which has backed high-profile startups including Safe Superintelligence, Perplexity and Figma. DANIEL GROSS The former CEO of AI startup Safe Superintelligence has joined the team to lead the AI products division, sources told Reuters. Pang was the head of Apple's Foundation Models team and responsible for advanced AI features, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. He joined Meta with a multi-million-dollar compensation package, according to Bloomberg News. TRAPIT BANSAL The AI researcher joined OpenAI in 2022, where he played a key role in developing the "o-series" reasoning models. Bansal has directly worked with OpenAI and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Ilya Sutskever, according to his LinkedIn page. SHUCHAO BI Bi joined OpenAI in 2024 after working for over 10 years at YouTube and Google. He co-founded YouTube Shorts and built multi-stage deep learning models to optimize Google Ads performance, according to his LinkedIn page. HUIWEN CHANG Chang joined OpenAI in 2023 after working as a Research Scientist at Google for more than four years, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a co-creator of GPT-4o, OpenAI's multimodal model, and invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research. JI LIN Lin joined OpenAI in 2023, where he contributed to building advanced multimodal reasoning systems and Operator reasoning stack, OpenAI's computer-using agent architecture. JOEL POBAR Pobar joined Anthropic in 2023, where he oversaw infrastructure and inference pipelines for large language models. He also worked at Meta for about 11 years. JACK RAE Rae was a pre-training technical lead for Google DeepMind's Gemini and spearheaded the reasoning development for Gemini 2.5. HONGYU REN Ren joined OpenAI in 2023, co-creating multiple o-series and GPT-4o models. He helped lead post-training efforts for the ChatGPT maker's most advanced reasoning models. JOHAN SCHALKWYK Schalkwyk was a former Google Fellow and oversaw major research and product integrations in speech AI. He has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs as a Voice Lead, according to his LinkedIn page. PEI SUN Sun worked on post-training, coding and reasoning for Gemini at Google DeepMind. He previously created the last two generations of self-driving unit Waymo's perception models. JIAHUI YU Yu joined OpenAI in 2023. Previously, he led the perception team at the AI startup. He co-created o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o models. SHENGJIA ZHAO Zhao worked as a research scientist at OpenAI. He co-created ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3. JASON WEI Wei is joining Meta, WIRED reported on Tuesday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. Wei became part of OpenAI in 2023, where he worked on the o1 and deep research models, after working at Google for more than two years, according to his personal website. HYUNG WON CHUNG Chung will also be joining Meta, according to the WIRED report. He joined OpenAI in 2023 after working at Google, according to his website. (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese, Jaspreet Singh and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)

Meta continues AI hiring spree, poaches two top OpenAI researchers: Report

Meta's AI hiring spree comes amid OpenAI's own counter-efforts to recruit talent from rivals like Tesla, xAI, and Meta. Meta has been aggressively recruiting talent to create its dream AI team. Recently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company have made headlines for allegedly poaching talent from Open AI and other tech companies. According to Wired, the company has already hired a few high-profile researchers from ChatGPT and has now poached two more prominent researchers from OpenAI, Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung. The company wants them to join its superintelligence lab, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. Both researchers have contributed to OpenAI's in-depth research projects, which include the development of the fundamental o1 and o3 models. In 2023, Wei, a former Google researcher renowned for his contributions to reinforcement learning (RL) and chain-of-thought prompting, joined OpenAI. He referred to himself as a "diehard" for RL at OpenAI. However, Hyung Won Chung, who focused on agents and reasoning at OpenAI, also overlapped with Wei at Google. He has a long-standing professional relationship with Wei and contributed to the company's core research models, according to his personal website. Since then, the researchers have not made any public statements about the move, and neither OpenAI nor Meta have deactivated their OpenAI Slack profiles. Also read: Samsung Galaxy S24 FE price drops by over Rs 25,000 during Flipkart GOAT Sale Wired also revealed last month that Mark Zuckerberg, sent out an internal memo detailing a revised AI strategy, along with a list of new hires for the company's prestigious AI division. The majority of those names were stolen from OpenAI. OpenAI has responded by going on a counterhiring rampage, hiring engineers from xAI, Tesla, and even Meta. As businesses look to create advanced general intelligence (AGI) systems, the back-and-forth reveals a growing talent arms race in the AI space. In a recent social media post, Wei discussed his experience with reinforcement learning, drawing parallels between AI training and personal development. "Imitation is good and you have to do it at first," he wrote. "But beating the teacher requires walking your own path and taking risks and rewards from the environment," he added.

Meta's dream team grows, hires two key Apple AI experts

With each new hire, Meta moves closer to building what Zuckerberg calls "the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry." Meta is continuing to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) team by hiring two AI researchers who worked at Apple: Mark Lee and Tom Gunter. The duo is joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs division, following the recent move of their former boss Ruoming Pang, who also left Apple to join Meta. Mark Lee, who was Pang's first hire at Apple, has already started at Meta, according to Bloomberg. Tom Gunter will be joining the company soon. He had briefly worked at another AI firm after leaving Apple but has now decided to make the switch to Meta as well. Also read: India chooses Perplexity as it overtakes ChatGPT on App Store These moves are part of Meta's aggressive strategy to become a leader in AI. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has declared artificial intelligence as the company's top priority and has committed to investing heavily in talent and infrastructure. He recently said Meta will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in computing resources to build what he calls "superintelligence." To help push this vision forward, several top AI researchers, including new hires, are working close to Zuckerberg at Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Also read: Made by Google 2025: Pixel 10 series, Watch 4 and more to launch on August 20 Meanwhile, Apple is facing internal challenges. Apple is reportedly exploring the use of external AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude to power Siri and other Apple Intelligence features. Also, to avoid more departures, Apple has started offering raises to AFM engineers to retain them, but the incentives reportedly fall short of what Meta is offering. Gunter, for example, is joining a group of AI experts at Meta who are receiving multiyear packages worth more than 100 million dollars, according to the report. With each new hire, Meta moves closer to building what Zuckerberg calls "the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry."