Meta isn’t slowing down in its effort to dominate AI. Simply days after dropping $15 billion into Scale AI and hiring its CEO Alexandr Wang to guide a brand new “superintelligence” division, Meta has now lured away three high researchers from OpenAI.
Based on the Wall Road Journal (WSJ), Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—who helped arrange OpenAI’s Zurich workplace final 12 months—are actually a part of Meta’s AI group. OpenAI confirmed the departures, and Beyer himself acknowledged the move on X, saying he’s “enthusiastic about what’s forward” however dismissed the rumored $100 million signing bonuses as “pretend information.”
“Meta Chief Govt Mark Zuckerberg has poached three OpenAI researchers to affix his superintelligence efforts, a recruiting coup supposed to assist steer Meta Platforms out of an AI disaster,” the WSJ reported.
“The social-media large employed Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who had been all working in OpenAI’s Zurich workplace, in line with individuals acquainted with the matter. The three arrange OpenAI’s workplace in Zurich late final 12 months. Earlier than that, they labored collectively at Google DeepMind, the corporate’s AI unit.”
Zuckerberg’s AI Energy Play: Meta Hires OpenAI’s Elite to Gasoline AGI Race
Nonetheless, the timing couldn’t be extra pointed. Meta is aggressively constructing a dream group, and Zuckerberg is personally concerned within the recruiting effort. Based on the report, he’s been reaching out to researchers over WhatsApp, internet hosting them at his houses, and coordinating every thing by way of a bunch chat reportedly known as “Recruiting Celebration.”
The Zurich trio isn’t simply any group of engineers. Earlier than OpenAI, they had been at Google DeepMind, the place they contributed to a few of the most vital breakthroughs in machine studying and pc imaginative and prescient, most notably, the Imaginative and prescient Transformer (ViT), which helped machines course of visible information much more effectively.
And so they weren’t the one ones to leap ship.
Meta additionally employed Trapit Bansal, a key contributor to OpenAI’s o1 reasoning mannequin, who beforehand labored with OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Bansal’s transfer alerts that Meta’s recruiting isn’t nearly quantity—it’s concentrating on the individuals constructing the next-gen reasoning frameworks that would outline AGI.
Final week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta was providing $100 million bonuses in an try to lure his high expertise. He downplayed the end result, saying “none of OpenAI’s greatest individuals” took the supply. Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, known as that declare “dishonest” in an inside assembly and added that provides of that measurement are restricted to a really small variety of senior roles. He additionally hinted that extra OpenAI employees could also be on the way in which to Meta.
Behind all this can be a clear shift. Meta used to lag behind in AGI efforts, with its Llama 4 mannequin falling quick in key reasoning and math benchmarks. That’s seemingly a part of what’s fueling this hiring spree. The corporate has already dedicated $65 billion to AI infrastructure, together with plans for a facility filled with over 1.3 million Nvidia GPUs. And with Wang now on the helm of its AGI push, Meta is throwing every thing it has at constructing techniques that may motive, be taught, and suppose at a better stage.
Dropping researchers like Beyer, Kolesnikov, Zhai, and Bansal stings for OpenAI, not simply due to their particular person contributions, however as a result of they had been serving to lead the cost in Europe. Nonetheless, Altman is placing on a assured entrance, insisting the core group is undamaged and that Meta’s poaching hasn’t disrupted operations.
What’s clear is that the AI expertise warfare is heating up. These aren’t simply hires—they’re strategic performs. And because the greatest names in tech attempt to get a step nearer to AGI, the battle for the most effective minds isn’t slowing down.
Why It Issues
After the panic sparked in January by DeepSeek’s high-performing open-source mannequin, Meta’s superintelligence group is shortly coming collectively. With 4 OpenAI researchers now leaping ship, Meta seems to be to have each the expertise and assets to go head-to-head with the world’s main AI firm—and presumably dominate the area the identical method it as soon as did with social media.
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