Meta Hires Two More OpenAI Workers Amid $300M AI Talent War

Meta is ramping up its effort to seek top AI talent and now has two of the top researchers from OpenAI: Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung. The hires come as Meta is continuing to invest in its superintelligence lab as insurgents, part of its increasing strategy to outpace competitors in the AI race.

According to a report from Wired, Outcast’s Wei and Chung both started at OpenAI in 2023 and have worked as a team on advanced AI projects such as the o3 and o1 models, deep search and reasoning systems. Prior to OpenAI, they had worked together at Google, where Wei was well-known for leading chain-of-thought research and the use of reinforcement learning approaches which effectively break down complicated tasks for AI models, step by step.

Meta’s action implies more than simply acquiring talent, it is a strong position in the escalating AI talent war. Meta reportedly is proposing up to $300 million over 4 years to acquire elite researchers. Wei and Chung are the latest in a succession of high-profile hires from OpenAI, Apple, Google DeepMind and GitHub.

As Meta ramps up its AI goals, there appears to be an increasing scope for issues. CEO Michael Dell recently noted that such hiring tactics could cause friction internally as employees may feel like they are being undervalued when compared to the fresh hire at a high paying level. 

Regardless, Meta’s mission is clear: build the most powerful AI systems by hiring the best minds in the world at any cost.