Meta Poaches Three From OpenAI

 

“Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has poached three OpenAI researchers to join his superintelligence efforts, a recruiting coup intended to help steer Meta Platforms out of an artificial-intelligence crisis.

 

The social-media giant hired Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai, who were all working in OpenAI's Zurich office, according to people familiar with the matter. The three set up in OpenAI's Zurich office last year. Before that, they worked together at Google DeepMind, the company's AI unit.

 

A spokeswoman for OpenAI confirmed that the three researchers have left the company.

 

Zuckerberg has been on an intense recruiting drive to right Meta's AI efforts after the release of its latest model fell flat. In some cases, he has offered researchers $100 million to join a new team focused on building superintelligence, or AI that is smarter than humans.

 

His company recently invested $14 billion in AI startup Scale and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead the new team. Zuckerberg has also tried to recruit OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman to join. Neither has.

 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said onstage at an event Tuesday that he wasn't worried about Zuckerberg's blitz.

 

"It's like OK, Zuckerberg is doing some new insane thing. What's next?" he said. Last week, Altman said his best people hadn't left for Meta.

 

Zuckerberg got personally involved in Meta's AI recruiting efforts in April after an underwhelming launch of its latest model. In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta was delaying the release of another version of the model -- the biggest one.

 

Some AI researchers have turned down the Meta CEO, and in several cases, OpenAI has counteroffered, giving its researchers more money and scope to stay.

 

Tech giants Meta and Alphabet's Google and startups OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to develop cutting-edge AI technology that will power the next wave of innovation in Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg's overtures to top AI researchers and engineers are the latest developments in a fierce war for talent taking place all over the world.

 

Meta plans to spend up to $65 billion on capital expenditures this year, largely to build out its AI ambitions.” [1]

 

1. Meta Poaches Three From OpenAI. Bobrowsky, Meghan.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 June 2025: B1.