Four researchers from OpenAI have made the shift to Meta, confirming sources speak to WIRED. The team includes Shengjia Zhao, Shuchao Bi, Jiahui Yu, and Hongyu Ren, who are now part of Meta’s superintelligence initiative. The news of their departure comes in the wake of aggressive recruitment efforts led by Mark Zuckerberg, aimed at rival labs to bolster Meta’s AI capabilities.
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, indicated recently that Meta has been making substantial offers to OpenAI employees, including signing bonuses reaching up to $100 million. However, he reassured that their top talent had, until now, declined such offers. One OpenAI insider corroborated these financial incentives.
Among the departing researchers, Hongyu Ren had a significant role as the post-training lead for OpenAI’s mini models and an upcoming open-source model. Shengjia Zhao, revered for his deep learning research skills, contributed to the development of the GPT-4 model after joining OpenAI in 2022. Jiahui Yu transitioned from Google DeepMind to OpenAI in late 2023, while Shuchao Bi managed OpenAI’s multimodal models.
These recent changes follow the exit of three other researchers from OpenAI’s Zurich office, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI and Meta have yet to respond to inquiries regarding the departures and their implications for their respective teams.
