Meta AI talent raid: OpenAI promises to reward employees after 8 poached

'It feels like someone's broken into our home', OpenAI mentions after Meta intensifying effort to recruit AI talent poaching from it

OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Mark Chen sent an internal message to staff stating that the leadership was revisiting compensation structures after at least eight researchers left to join Meta’s AI division. His internal Slack message, sent on Saturday, as seen by Wired, acknowledged growing anxiety in the company, assuring staff that management, including CEO Sam Altman, was working closely with affected teams and “working around the clock to retain top talent”.

 

Chen described Meta’s recruitment spree as a violation, telling staff it felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something”.

 

Meta poaches at least eight OpenAI staff

The message came as four more researchers, namely Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi and Hongyu Ren, were confirmed to be joining Meta, according to a report by The Information. The hires followed news that Trapit Bansal, a senior researcher at OpenAI, had already joined Meta’s newly formed 'superintelligence' group.

 

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, based in OpenAI’s Zurich office, had also been poached. The trio had also previously worked together at Google DeepMind and are seen as leading figures in foundational AI research. 

That brings the known tally of recent OpenAI departures to eight.

 

Meta boosts ‘superintelligence’ AI team

Meta’s recruitment drive is part of an effort to rescue its AI strategy following a disappointing rollout of its latest Llama 4 models. According to reports, the models underperformed against internal expectations and benchmark standards.

 

In response, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally overseen the formation of a ‘superintelligence’ team aimed at developing AI systems that surpass human intelligence. To accomplish this, the group has been tasked with attracting top talent in the AI field.

 

Meta has also invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a data-labelling startup crucial to machine learning model development. The company also brought on Scale’s founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to lead the new AI initiative.

 

Sam Altman flags Meta’s hiring tactics

Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta was offering enormous bonuses in an effort to lure top minds from rival labs. “They started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team... You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that in compensation per year,” Altman said in a podcast. However, he added that OpenAI’s “best people” had not taken up the offer.

 

Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth later addressed the claims internally, acknowledging that while top researchers may have been offered large packages, “the actual terms of the offer” were more nuanced than a one-off bonus, The Verge reported.