“I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” Chen wrote in a June 28 Slack message to employees, obtained by Wired. “Please trust that we haven’t been sitting idly by.”
The memo followed reports that Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, had hired several key OpenAI researchers, Entrepreneur reported. The hires include Trapit Bansal and three members of the team that helped launch OpenAI’s Zurich office: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai.
Chen said he and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with other senior leaders, had been working “around the clock” to retain talent. “We’ve been more proactive than ever before, we’re recalibrating comp, and we’re scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent.”
He also stressed the importance of fairness: “While I’ll fight to keep every one of you, I won’t do so at the price of fairness to others.”
OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen. Photo courtesy of OpenAI
The memo included supportive messages from seven other OpenAI research leaders, encouraging employees to stay. One wrote: “If they pressure you, or make ridiculous exploding offers just tell them to back off, it’s not nice to pressure people in potentially the most important decision.”
The battle for top AI talent in Silicon Valley is escalating. In addition to the Zurich hires, The Information reported that Meta has also recruited Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren, bringing the total number of recent OpenAI departures to at least eight.
Meta’s hiring spree is tied to its push for artificial superintelligence. The company recently launched a new lab focused on superintelligence, led by Alexandr Wang, founder of data-labeling startup Scale AI and the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Earlier this month, Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI.
Zuckerberg reportedly wants Meta to lead the superintelligence race and integrate advanced AI into products such as chatbots and smart glasses. According to The New York Times, the company is offering compensation packages in the millions to attract top researchers.
Altman said earlier this month that Meta had offered OpenAI researchers $100 million signing bonuses and even higher total packages, but claimed that none of the company’s “best people” had accepted the offers.