In the intensifying battle for elite artificial intelligence talent, Meta has successfully recruited three prominent researchers from OpenAI, marking a significant strategic victory for Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious AI initiative. The newly acquired trio—Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—had previously played key roles in establishing OpenAI’s Zurich office. At Meta, they will join the company’s expanding superintelligence team.
This high-profile talent acquisition follows a widely publicized hiring spree by Zuckerberg, who has taken a hands-on approach, personally messaging top AI specialists and orchestrating lavish dinners at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe. According to reports, Meta has offered compensation packages exceeding $100 million to attract top researchers from OpenAI.
While this aggressive hiring campaign has garnered mixed results overall—failing notably to secure OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, who have instead opted to launch new startups—Meta’s approach has recently secured key industry players. Earlier, Zuckerberg notably brought on Alexandr Wang of Scale AI through a landmark $14 billion deal, making Wang one of the costliest hires in the technology sector’s recent history.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously commented publicly about Zuckerberg’s extravagant recruitment tactics. During a recent podcast interview, Altman expressed relief that up to that point, none of his “best people” had accepted Meta’s extraordinary offers. Despite Altman’s dismissal of Meta’s methods, this latest departure of vital OpenAI researchers illustrates that Zuckerberg’s relentless talent push continues to reshape the landscape of the AI industry.
