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As race for AI heats up, Meta poaches three OpenAI researchers
Sam Altman recently said Mark Zuckerberg has been personally reaching out to top AI scientists, messaging them via WhatsApp and organising meetings read more
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Meta AI with Voice, as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, US, on September 25, 2024. (Photo: Reuters)
Meta has poached three senior researchers from OpenAI, marking a notable gain in its ongoing effort to attract top artificial intelligence talent, even as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly dismissed the tactics used by Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
The three researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, previously established OpenAI's Zurich office and have now joined Meta's recently formed superintelligence team, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
Their hiring comes amid a high-profile recruiting campaign by Zuckerberg, who, according to reports, has been offering compensation packages worth more than $100 million in attempts to lure AI researchers away from OpenAI and other competitors.
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Sam Altman mocks Mark Zuckerberg's tactics
Altman, in a recent podcast with his brother Jack, said Zuckerberg has been personally reaching out to top AI scientists, messaging them via WhatsApp and organising meetings through a chat group reportedly dubbed 'Recruiting Party'. The Journal reported that Zuckerberg has hosted prospective hires at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.
The aggressive approach has had mixed results. Meta recently secured a $14 billion partnership with Scale AI, bringing CEO Alexandr Wang on board. But efforts to recruit OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman were unsuccessful. Both have launched their own startups in recent months.
In the same podcast, Altman said, 'I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on [those offers].'
Meta's big spending plans
Meta plans on splurging up to a whopping $65 billion on capital expenditures this year. The amount would be to largely to build out its AI ambitions.
Over the course of last couple of months, Zuckerberg has tried to project the vision of a future where people speak to friends that are AI, use AI to create advertising campaigns from scratch, and get in touch with AI business agents when they need to speak to a brand.
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