OpenAI Recruits Top Engineers from Tesla, xAI, Meta with Aim for Interstellar Gate}

Counterattack begins here?

Recently, Meta's talent hunt for AI experts has become the hottest topic in the tech industry. Someone asked Sam Altman about Zuckerberg and Meta's talent acquisition, and he replied: "It's okay."

Underneath the surface awkwardness, a fierce competition has already begun.

This Tuesday, Wired magazine revealed that OpenAI recruited four high-profile engineers from rival companies, including David Lau, former Vice President of Software Engineering at Tesla, to expand its team.

This news was shared by Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI and head of the expansion team, via an internal Slack message this Tuesday.

The new hires also include:

• Uday Ruddarraju, former Infrastructure Lead at xAI and X Inc.;
• Mike Dalton, Infrastructure Engineer at xAI;
• Angela Fan, AI researcher at Meta.

Dalton and Ruddarraju previously worked together at Robinhood. During their time at xAI, they helped build Colossus—a supercomputer with over 200,000 GPUs.

Hannah Wong, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said: "We are very excited to welcome these new members to our expansion team. Our strategy is to continuously build and integrate world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and benefit hundreds of millions of people through AI."

The expansion team manages backend hardware, software systems, and data centers, including a major joint project called "Stargate", focused on building AI infrastructure to support training cutting-edge foundational models. This supercomputer is planned to include one million dedicated AI chips, with an estimated cost of $115 billion.

Although these efforts are less visible than user-facing products like ChatGPT, they are crucial for OpenAI’s goal of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and maintaining its leadership position.

Uday Ruddarraju, one of the new recruits, said in an interview: "Infrastructure is the intersection of research and reality. Stargate is a true moonshot for infrastructure, aligning perfectly with my passion for ambitious, system-level challenges."

David Lau also stated: "I am very clear that accelerating the realization of safe, aligned AGI is the most meaningful mission of my career."

This talent acquisition comes amid fierce competition among major AI companies for top researchers and resources.

Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively recruiting, poaching at least seven employees from OpenAI, offering high salaries and abundant computing resources to support research. This move prompted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to tell staff that the company might adjust its compensation plans to better compete.

Media reports also confirmed that Zuckerberg’s targets include multiple employees from Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and co-founder John Schulman.

The recruitment of talent from Tesla, xAI, and X Inc. may intensify tensions between Altman and Elon Musk.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left three years later due to disagreements over the company's direction and leadership. He is now suing OpenAI, accusing it of abandoning its original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, the competition for top AI talent has become fierce.

Recently, this competition has escalated, with some researchers and executives openly discussing the possibility of achieving Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), machines that surpass humans in all tasks.

Major companies are rethinking traditional hiring norms to be the first to reach this potential breakthrough.

The emergence of ChatGPT has also highlighted the importance of scaling in AI development.

Using more data and computational power during training and deployment makes current models more powerful and reveals surprising new capabilities.

Former OpenAI researchers poached by Meta are now believed to have reached eight in number. It is speculated that these researchers will join the new Superintelligence Lab led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, funded with heavy investments.

On June 28, OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Mark Chen sent a strongly worded memo to staff, vowing to compete head-on with Meta in the talent race. Chen said: "I have a strong premonition—like someone breaking into our home and stealing. Believe me, we are not standing still."

For more on the talent war, see our previous reports:

• OpenAI’s Week-long Vacation Amidst Meta’s High Salaries and Talent Poaching
• Four Chinese Scholars Poached from OpenAI by Meta
• Meta’s Sweep of OpenAI’s Zurich Office and Poaching of Three ViT Authors

Can OpenAI break free from the wave of poaching and regain the initiative in the talent war to open the “Interstellar Gate” first?

^Reference:

^{https://www.wired.com/story/openai-new-hires-scaling/?_sp=bd7656fa-e187-42b5-9135-330409dc6a50.1752023686990}