Meta Poaches Top AI Talent from OpenAI in Aggressive Push for Superintelligence

Meta Hires 3 OpenAI Researchers as Poaching Continues | AIM

According to WSJ, Meta is poaching OpenAI researchers Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. Meta, the company behind the Llama family of open-source models, has 'poached' three OpenAI researchers to join its efforts to build superintelligent systems, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Wednesday. WSJ, citing sources familiar with the matter, revealed that Meta has hired three researchers -- Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. They were responsible for setting up OpenAI's office in Zurich, Switzerland, last year. If true, this would be yet another move by Meta to boost talent within its company, as it tries to catch up with the competition. Recently, Meta invested $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, an AI startup that helps enterprises develop their own AI models. Scale AI's CEO, Alexander Wang, stepped down from the role and will lead Meta's new 'superintelligence' team. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company also reportedly made an acquisition offer to Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. During its fundraising efforts, the startup was valued at around $32 billion. However, the offer was declined. The company is trying to hire SSI co-founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to strengthen its new AI division, which is headed by Wang. In a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta offers extremely high compensation packages to OpenAI employees, including signing bonuses of up to $100 million. While pursuing some of the best talent in the industry has been a familiar pattern historically, the strategy seems more important than ever in today's AI-driven world. According to reports, Apple is also reportedly looking to acquire Perplexity AI to boost its AI capabilities on its devices, which Meta had also considered before investing in Scale AI. Meta also looked into acquiring Thinking Machines, a startup founded by the former OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati.

Meta reportedly recruits four former OpenAI researchers to its superintelligence lab - SiliconANGLE

Meta reportedly recruits four former OpenAI researchers to its superintelligence lab Meta Platforms Inc. has reportedly recruited four former OpenAI researchers to its newly launched superintelligence lab. TechCrunch today cited a source as saying that the hires include Trapit Bansal, who joined the ChatGPT developer in 2022. He reportedly played a key role in launching OpenAI's reinforcement learning program. Reinforcement learning is an AI training method that lends itself to building reasoning models. The three other OpenAI researchers who have reportedly joined Meta are Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai. The Wall Street Journal cited sources as saying that the trio helped establish the company's office in Zurich late last year. They earlier worked at Alphabet Inc.'s Google DeepMind machine learning research lab. The hires come a few weeks after word first emerged that Meta is forming a superintelligence research group. The lab will be tasked with developing AI models that can outperform humans across a wide range of tasks. The company reportedly launched the unit in response to issues with Llama 4 Behemoth, an internally-developed large language model that it previewed earlier this year. Meta has had to delay the algorithm's launch over concerns about its performance. Last week, OpenAI revealed that the Facebook parent had tried to poach some of its employees with up to $100 million sign-up bonuses. According to Journal, several of the ChatGPT developer's researchers have declined Meta's offers. In some cases, OpenAI reportedly offered staffers "more money and scope to stay." Meta is not limiting its recruiting push to OpenAI's workforce. Earlier this month, the company hired Alexandr Wang, the Chief Executive Officer of AI training dataset provider ScaleAI Inc. Meta also invested $14.3 billion in the startup for a 49% stake. More high-profile hires could be announced in the coming weeks. Bloomberg reported today that Meta is in advanced talks to acquire PlayAI Inc., a Palo Alto, California-based voice AI developer. It's backed by about $21 million in funding from Y Combinator and other institutional investors. The deal is expected to see the Facebook parent hire several of PlayAI's employees. The startup provides a cloud platform for creating voice AI agents. The software is powered by two custom AI models known as Play AI 3.0 mini and Dialog. The former algorithm is optimized for hardware-efficiency, while the latter features ten times as many parameters and offers higher output quality. Meta is reportedly also seeking to hire tech investor Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. The duo currently work at Safe Superintelligence Inc., a startup they co-founded last year with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Like Meta's new superintelligence unit, the company is seeking to develop AI models that can perform many tasks better than humans.

Meta hires former OpenAI top talent amid AGI push

Meta's latest AI hire follows several developments and partnerships aimed at making the tech giant a leader in the burgeoning sector. Tech company Meta has hired Trapit Bansal, a former key researcher at artificial intelligence company OpenAI, who was central to developing the firm's o1 reasoning AI model. Bansal is the latest ex-OpenAI researcher to join the Meta team, following the addition of Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, according to TechCrunch. The hires are part of Meta's push to expand its AI operations and overhaul the capabilities of its reasoning models by training its AI on real-world scenarios to cultivate intelligence. Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun previously said: "There are four essential characteristics of intelligent behavior that every animal, or relatively smart animal, can do, and certainly humans: understanding the physical world, having persistent memory, being able to reason, and being able to plan complex actions -- particularly planning hierarchically." Meta's AI development came into sharper focus earlier this year, as advancements in artificial intelligence became a top priority for governments around the world seeking to win the international AI race. Related: OpenAI cuts ties with Scale AI amid data labeler's new Meta deal -- Report Meta leans heavily into AI with stock acquisitions, energy deals, and defense partnerships In June, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI, a data labeling company that provides services to AI platforms, valued at nearly $15 billion. As part of the purchase, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta to collaborate on further AI development. The Facebook parent company also signed a 20-year nuclear energy deal with electricity provider Constellation Energy to receive 1.1 gigawatts of power to fuel its AI data centers and infrastructure. According to a June 3 announcement, the energy will be sourced from Constellation's Clinton Clean Energy Center in the US state of Illinois, with delivery starting in 2027. Anduril, a defense contractor specializing in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, partnered with Meta in May to develop AI-powered augmented reality headsets for the United States military. The headset will integrate Anduril's Lattice platform, an AI-powered information system that organizes tactical battlefield data from various sensors and weapons platforms into a comprehensive information source for soldiers, the defense company said in a May 29 announcement.

Mark Zuckerberg's A.I. Hiring Spree Targets OpenAI and DeepMind

From billion-dollar investments to personal pitches, Meta is waging a full-scale war for the future of A.I. supremacy. Mark Zuckerberg's frenzied plan to snap up A.I. talent through personalized outreach, aggressive pitches and eight-figure bonuses appears to be paying off. Meta has recruited OpenAI staffers Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai to join its newly-formed team dedicated to advanced forms of A.I., as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters The three researchers all formerly worked at Google DeepMind and were relatively new to OpenAI, having been tapped by the ChatGPT-maker at the end of last year to open an office in Zurich. A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed that the trio have departed the company but declined to comment further. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has so far appeared unfazed by Zuckerberg's efforts to poach his staffers. "It's like, okay, Zuckerberg is doing some new insane thing, what's next?" Altman said on the Hard Fork podcast this week. The scale of Meta's hiring push became clear earlier this month when the company brought on Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old CEO of Scale AI, following an investment of more than $14 billion in his company. Wang is expected to play a central role in Meta's new A.I. unit, a roughly 50-person team focused on developing superintelligence, a form of A.I. with capabilities surpassing those of humans. In 2025, Zuckerberg has launched an aggressive spending campaign to accelerate Meta's A.I. ambitions and expand its data center and hardware infrastructure amid growing frustration with the company's progress in the field. Alongside plans to spend up to $72 billion on capital expenditures this year, he's pulling out all the stops to lure top talent from competitors, personally pitching recruits at his homes and rearranging office seating to position the superintelligence team nearby. In some cases, Meta has attempted to entice employees at OpenAI by promising signing bonuses as high as $100 million, revealed Altman earlier this month on an episode of the Uncapped podcast. "So far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that," he said. But that's not for lack of trying -- Meta has apparently tried, and failed, to recruit OpenAI staffers including researchers Noam Brown and Bill Peebles and co-founder John Schulman. OpenAI isn't the only company on Zuckerberg's radar. The billionaire reportedly also tried to acquire Perplexity AI and Safe Superintelligence, the A.I. startup co-founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. After Meta was rebuffed by the latter, it instead recruited two of Safe Superintelligence's other key figures -- Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, according to CNBC. Other notable hires include Google DeepMind's Jack Rae and Sesame AI's Johan Schalkwyk. As Meta builds out its new A.I. unit, it's not the only player fueling an all-out hiring war. In response to Zuckerberg's aggressive recruitment tactics, rival companies have begun promoting staff or boosting compensation to retain top talent. Shortly after Meta approached Google DeepMind's Koray Kavukcuoglu, the researcher was promoted to Google's chief A.I. architect, reporting directly to CEO Sundar Pichai, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI has also reportedly countered Meta's overtures by offering targeted employees more money and greater responsibilities.

Meta Reportedly Hires Away 3 Researchers From OpenAI | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai, all stationed with OpenAI's Zurich office, have been hired by the social media giant for its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts, the Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday (June 25), citing sources familiar with the matter. The report noted that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally campaigning to hire new AI expertise to bolster his company's flagging AI efforts. In some cases, that has meant offering $100 million to researchers willing to join Meta's team working on artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI that can perform tasks at or above the level of humans. Meta also recently invested $14 billion in AI startup Scale and brought its CEO Alexandr Wang on board to oversee the new team. According to the WSJ, Zuckerberg has also tried to recruit OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, though both have declined. The report also pointed out that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said onstage at an event earlier this week that he wasn't concerned about Zuckerberg's efforts to poach his team. "It's like OK, Zuckerberg is doing some new insane thing. What's next?" he said. Altman also recently said his best people hadn't departed for Meta. As covered here earlier this week, Zuckerberg has reportedly approached numerous high-profile AI companies about possible acquisitions. In addition to Scale, those startups include Perplexity, Runway, Thinking Machines and Safe Superintelligence, the latter two founded by former top executives at OpenAI. And as PYMNTS noted, it's not only Meta trying to beef up its AI roster. "The recruitment push comes at a time when competition for skilled AI talent has reached a fever pitch, with companies like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and Anthropic vying for the same pool of geniuses," the report said. The heightened focus on AI talent is also happening as Meta wants to expand the capabilities of its Llama AI model and integrate advanced AI into its products. The company's AI-driven features now power everything from content recommendations on Instagram to conversational assistants in WhatsApp. The company is also exploring AI agents to enhance customer service and commerce across its platforms.