Meta has successfully lured three high-profile artificial intelligence researchers away from OpenAI, in what is being described as a major win for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s superintelligence ambitions, reportedThe Wall Street Journal.
Reportedly, the trio—Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—had been working at OpenAI’s Zurich office until recently, which they helped establish late last year.
All three researchers share a common background, having previously collaborated at Google DeepMind before making the move to OpenAI. Their shift to Meta underscores a deepening competition between tech titans in the race to build the next generation of AI systems.
A spokesperson for OpenAI has confirmed the departure of Beyer, Kolesnikov and Zhai, though no further details were provided about their exit. Industry insiders say the group’s transition to Meta is closely tied to Zuckerberg’s recent drive to attract world-class talent to regain momentum in the AI space—an effort that began in earnest following a lukewarm reception to Meta’s latest large language model.
In recent months, Zuckerberg has reportedly beenpersonally involved in recruitment efforts, occasionally offering compensation packages worth as much as $100 million to top-tier researchers. His new vision centres on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI that can outperform humans across a broad range of cognitive tasks.
In addition to securing this trio, Meta has also brought in Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, who will now lead a newly-formed team focused on building superintelligence. There have also been attempts to bring OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman into the fold, though neither have accepted.
While OpenAI has remained largely tight-lipped on the poaching, CEO Sam Altman appeared unbothered during a recent public event. “It’s like OK, Zuckerberg is doing some new insane thing. What’s next?” he remarked, later adding that OpenAI’s best talent had not jumped ship.
Zuckerberg’s aggressive approach highlights the intensifying arms race in Silicon Valley, as companies like Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic vie for dominance in the AI frontier. Meta alone is expected to spend up to$65 billion this year on infrastructure, much of it earmarked for AI development.
