Tencent Holdings Ltd. has recruited a prominent artificial intelligence researcher from OpenAI in one of the most high-profile defections from the US AI sector to China, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Shenzhen-based gaming and messaging company hired Yao Shunyu to work on integrating AI into its services, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the matter isn’t yet public. Yao had most recently worked at OpenAI in the US after stints at Google and Princeton University, according to his LinkedIn account.
Tech companies have battled furiously for AI talent this year, with companies like Meta Platforms Inc. reportedly offering $100 million signing bonuses as they try to poach employees from their rivals. Tencent offered Yao compensation of as much as 100 million yuan, said one of the people, without specifying the conditions for reaching the top of that pay range.
After local media reports that Yao would join the company for a pay package of more than 100 million yuan, Tencent posted to its WeChat account a screen grab of one headline on the subject stamped with “rumor” across the image. It didn’t specify which part of the reports were incorrect.
Tencent, OpenAI and Yao didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yao has written or co-written about 10 research papers and specializes in studying AI agents, according to his GitHub page. The papers include “Language Agents: From Next-Token Prediction to Digital Automation” and “Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents.”
He graduated from Tsinghua University, China’s leading science and engineering school, and received a PhD in computer science from Princeton, according to his LinkedIn.
With assistance from Seth Fiegerman and Edwin Chan.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
