In the competitive race for AI talent, Meta has reportedly scored a win by hiring three researchers from OpenAI, despite CEO Sam Altman publicly mocking Mark Zuckerberg’s extravagant recruitment tactics.
The latest additions to Zuckerberg’s recruitment efforts are Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—all of whom helped establish OpenAI’s Zurich office—who are now part of Meta’s superintelligence team, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Altman revealed in a podcast that Zuckerberg has been offering compensation packages exceeding $100 million to attract top talent from OpenAI. The Journal also reported that Zuckerberg has been personally messaging hundreds of AI researchers via WhatsApp, coordinating recruitment through a “Recruiting Party 🎉” chat and hosting dinners at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.
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While this strategy has had mixed results, Zuckerberg recently secured Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang with a $14 billion investment, making him one of tech’s highest-paid hires. However, bigger targets like OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman have eluded him, as they have launched new startups.
In the podcast, Altman expressed satisfaction that, so far, none of OpenAI’s top talent have accepted Zuckerberg’s offers.
SOURCE: TECH CRUNCH
