Meta has reportedly lured three senior researchers from OpenAI, scoring a rare win in Mark Zuckerberg’s high-stakes, high-drama talent poaching saga.
The trio—Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—formerly led OpenAI’s Zurich office and are now part of Meta’s so-called “superintelligence” team.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the hires come amid Zuckerberg’s over-the-top campaign to woo AI researchers with compensation packages north of $100 million.
This recruiting frenzy includes WhatsApp spams, dinner soirées at his mansions, and a group chat ironically dubbed “Recruiting Party 🎉.”
Despite these efforts, many high-profile targets—like OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman—have declined his lavish offers, opting instead to launch rival startups.
Zuckerberg recently secured Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang with a $14 billion investment, likely setting records for both overpaying and overcompensating.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, meanwhile, publicly dismissed Zuckerberg’s charm offensive in a podcast, claiming the “best people” have stayed loyal—for now.
Meta’s latest haul may offer a glimmer of hope for a strategy that’s so far produced more headlines than results.
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