What Is OpenAI's Scaling Team? Tesla, xAI, Meta Engineers Join Their Ranks as AI Hiring Competition Heats Up
The newly recruited specialists will be part of the company's scaling team, which oversees OpenAI's high-performance computing infrastructure, data centers, and tools that underpin models like GPT-4 and beyond.
The hires include David Lau, the former VP of Software Engineering at Tesla; Uday Ruddaraju and Mike Dalton from xAI; and Meta's AI researcher Angela Fan. Ruddarraju and Dalton have previously played a key role in building Colossus, a supercomputer with more than 200,000 GPUs.
The additions were revealed in an internal Slack message by Greg Brockman, OpenAI's cofounder, who also leads the scaling team. The division plays a behind-the-scenes part but is regarded as mission-critical for training and deploying OpenAI's most powerful models. It also powers Stargate, a next-gen AI compute system.
"Infrastructure is where the research meets reality," Ruddarraju said in a statement, noting that Stargate was a perfect match for attacking ambitious, systems-level problems.
Lau expressed a similar sentiment: "Rapid progress towards value-aligned AGI is the most fulfilling mission I can conceive of, for the next stage of my career."
The new hires were confirmed by OpenAI through a spokesperson, Hannah Wong, who said the company was "building top-tier infrastructure and research teams to ensure that we can deliver AI that is safe and beneficial to everyone" and to "bring the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions," she said.
The move to hire comes as tech giants jockey for position. Zuckerberg has been personally courting AI researchers, making them offers they can't refuse. Meta recently poached at least seven researchers away from OpenAI and other rivals and is aggressively growing its Superintelligence Labs.
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are also fighting. Musk, who had been a cofounder of OpenAI, is currently suing the organization over the nonprofit-to-for-profit shift and its partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI is also suing Musk for business interference.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
44 minutes ago
- CNA
Oracle to invest $3 billion in AI, cloud expansion in Germany, Netherlands
Oracle will invest $3 billion over the next five years in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure in Germany and the Netherlands to meet upbeat demand, the company said in separate statements on Tuesday. The cloud service provider plans to allocate $2 billion to Germany and $1 billion to the Netherlands. Major technology firms have poured tens of billions of dollars into developing AI infrastructure following the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Oracle, whose cloud offerings support companies in building AI infrastructure, has seen its shares surge about 38 per cent so far this year. In June, the company raised its annual revenue forecast, driven by strong demand for its AI-related cloud services.
Straits Times
4 hours ago
- Straits Times
Tesla to sell Model Y cars in India, starting at $89k
Find out what's new on ST website and app. People are seen outside the Tesla showroom ahead of its opening in Mumbai on July 15. MUMBAI - Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Tesla has priced its Model Y at about US$69,770 (S$89,450) in India, the highest among major markets, its website showed, as the electric carmaker geared up to open its first showroom in Mumbai on July 15. With delivery estimated to start from the third quarter, Tesla will drive on to India's busy roads, targeting a niche premium EV segment that accounts for just 4 per cent of overall sales in the world's third-largest car market. It will compete mainly with German luxury giants such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz, rather than domestic mass-market EV players such as Tata Motors and Mahindra. Tesla's Model Y rear-wheel drive will set back buyers 6 million rupees (S$89,000), while its Model Y long-range rear-wheel drive costs 6.8 million rupees. That compares with a starting price from US$44,990 in the United States, 263,500 yuan (S$47,100) in China, and €45,970 (S$68,800) in Germany. Grappling with excess capacity in global factories and declining sales, Tesla has adopted a strategy of selling imported vehicles in India, despite duties and levies running into roughly 70 per cent. On July 15, police guarded Tesla's first showroom in India as media crowded outside the office complex where it is located and the chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra, home to the Indian commercial capital, arrived for the launch. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore $3b money laundering case: MinLaw acts against 4 law firms, 1 lawyer over seized properties Singapore Air India crash: SIA has completed checks on its Boeing 787 fuel switches as a precaution Opinion What we can do to fight the insidious threat of 'zombie vapes' Singapore $230,000 in fines issued after MOM checks safety at over 500 workplaces from April to June Business 'Some cannot source outside China': S'pore firms' challenges and support needed amid US tariffs Opinion Sumiko at 61: Everything goes south when you age, changing your face from a triangle to a rectangle Multimedia From local to global: What made top news in Singapore over the last 180 years? Singapore 'Nobody deserves to be alone': Why Mummy and Acha have fostered over 20 children in the past 22 years Inside the showroom clad in Tesla's signature minimalist neutral tones, the Model Y was draped under black and grey covers, partially visible through the glass. Access was tightly regulated, with no sign of fans or onlookers nearby. Tesla's website showed the Model Y available for registration in Mumbai at an on-road price of 6.1 million rupees, with a booking deposit of 22,220 rupees. The firm's Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability is on offer at an additional cost of 600,000 rupees, with future updates promised to enable operation with minimal driver intervention. While the current features require active driver supervision and are not fully autonomous, Tesla says the system will evolve through over-the-air software updates. REUTERS
CNA
5 hours ago
- CNA
US AI startups see funding surge while more VC funds struggle to raise, data shows
U.S. startup funding surged 75.6 per cent in the first half of 2025, thanks to the continued AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever, even as venture capital firms struggled to raise money, a report from PitchBook on Tuesday showed. Startup funding in the first six months of 2025 jumped to $162.8 billion, marking the strongest performance since the same period in 2021 — the historic peak for venture capital activity. That previous surge came during the era of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), when central banks slashed rates to stimulate economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, sending capital into higher-risk assets including venture capital. This year's boom has been driven largely by major AI investments and bold bets from big tech companies, a wave of activity set off by the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. In the past three months alone, $69.9 billion was invested in U.S. startups. Standout deals included OpenAI's $40 billion round and Meta's $14.3 billion purchase of a stake in Scale AI. Other AI deals exceeding $1 billion in the second quarter included significant investments in Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machine Labs, Anduril, and Grammarly. These deals underscore sustained investor conviction in the AI sector, which accounted for 64.1 per cent of the total deal value and 35.6 per cent of the deal count in the first half of the year. "I think it's downstream of the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic continue to grow at unbelievable rates," said Davis Treybig, partner at VC firm Innovation Endeavors. "If there's even a chance you could see that sort of progress in other domains, whether it's robotics, protein folding models, world models or video models, then there's a lot of people who are going to want to invest a lot of money." HARDER FOR VC FUNDS In contrast, U.S. venture capital fundraising continued to face headwinds, with just $26.6 billion raised across 238 funds in the first half of the year. This subdued environment represents a 33.7 per cent year-over-year decline in capital raised, extending the downward trend from 2024. It is also taking fund managers longer to close new vehicles, with the median time stretching to 15.3 months by the second quarter of 2025 - the longest in over a decade, data shows. The disconnection from the startup market reflects concerns from limited partners on the asset class due to recent underperformance and liquidity constraints. A rebound in exit activity, including IPOs and M&A, has brought a sense of optimism for the remainder of the year. Exit activity in the second quarter was up 40 per cent from last year, as a loosening antitrust environment and a thawing IPO market boost confidence. Sectors aligned with President Donald Trump's priorities such as AI, national security, defense technology, fintech and crypto dominated IPO interest in the second quarter, the report noted.
