Tech talent war heats up: Meta poaches Apple AI researchers after OpenAI
Led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, in the last few days, Meta has been poaching AI experts left and right by offering them multi-million-dollar pay packages. Now, a Bloomberg report suggests that Meta has hired Mark Lee and Tom Gunter, two AI researchers who previously worked at Apple.
While Lee has already started working, citing sources familiar with the matter, the report says Gunter will soon be joining Meta. As it turns out, both Lee and Gunter were close to Rouming Pang, the renowned AI researcher who previously led Apple's Foundational Models team and recently joined Meta after the company offered him a multiyear compensation package worth well over $200 million.
When Pang worked for Apple, Lee was his first hire. On the other hand, Gunter had made a name for himself at Cupertino and was regarded as one of the most senior employees. Meta's Superintelligence Labs was reportedly created to bring together the company's foundational AI model teams, product teams and the Fundamental AI research (FAIR) division.
A few days ago, Wired reported that OpenAI researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung may soon be joining Meta. Wei worked on o3 and deep research models, while Hyung worked on the o1 model and focused on reasoning and agents.
These poachings are part of Mark Zuckerberg's plan to expand its Superintelligence Labs division with talent from around the world. In a post on Threads, the Meta CEO said that his company would 'invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence', which refers to a form of advanced technology that can do tasks better than humans.
In the coming days, tech giants and multi-billion-dollar AI startups like Google, OpenAI and Meta might double down on hiring researchers working on AI by offering them even more lucrative packages.
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