Clubic
@ClubicThe big campaign to poach Meta from the OpenAI teams is starting to hurt the company behind ChatGPT. So much that it intends to improve the salary conditions of its requested employees.
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Meta Hires Eight OpenAI Researchers Amid Disputed $100 Million Bonus Claims
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Meta Platforms has intensified its artificial-intelligence recruitment drive, hiring at least eight senior researchers from OpenAI within a single week, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and The Information. The social-media company is building a new “superintelligence” unit under Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg after earlier struggles to keep pace with rivals in generative AI.
The first wave of hires, disclosed by the Journal on 26 June, included Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai from OpenAI’s Zurich office. TechCrunch later confirmed the addition of Trapit Bansal, a specialist in reinforcement-learning models. On 28 June, The Information reported that four more OpenAI researchers—Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi and Hongyu Ren—had accepted offers to join Meta, bringing the total to eight defections.
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said on a podcast that Meta had dangled signing bonuses as high as $100 million to woo top talent. Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, called the figure “wildly misleading,” saying only a handful of exceptionally senior recruits could command such packages.
The departures have prompted an internal response at OpenAI. In a Slack message obtained by WIRED, Chief Research Officer Mark Chen told employees he felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something” and said management was “recalibrating comp” to retain staff. OpenAI is allowing most employees a week off to recover from heavy workloads while its leaders work to stem further exits.
The rapid escalation underscores the fierce competition for advanced AI talent as large technology companies race to develop more capable systems. Meta is reportedly aiming for a 50-person elite research team, while OpenAI is revisiting pay structures to hold on to specialists integral to projects such as GPT-4.1 and next-generation reasoning models.
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