Meta’s Talent Raid on OpenAI Intensifies Amid AI Arms Race – Hires Four More Researchers

Meta’s aggressive hiring push to supercharge its artificial intelligence research has continued unabated, with The Information now reporting that four more researchers have jumped ship from OpenAI to join Mark Zuckerberg’s AI ambitions.

The latest hires — Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren — follow earlier reported departure of Trapit Bansal, a key contributor to OpenAI’s reasoning model o1, and three others: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, according to The Wall Street Journal.

These moves mark a sharp escalation in Meta’s quiet but high-stakes war for elite AI talent. Zuckerberg has signaled that Meta’s future is tied to advancing “AI superintelligence,” with plans to embed powerful reasoning models into its consumer products and business tools.

Sources say Meta is offering eye-watering compensation packages, with some top researchers reportedly receiving offers valued at up to $100 million, though Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth downplayed the headline figures, saying the actual terms are “more complex.”

A Response to Llama 4’s Underperformance?

The hires come in the wake of April’s launch of Meta’s Llama 4 — a suite of open-weight AI models that, while widely used, reportedly failed to meet internal expectations. Zuckerberg had hoped the release would rival OpenAI’s GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini in terms of performance and reasoning capability. Instead, it drew criticism for the model used in Meta’s benchmark testing, with some accusing the company of using a specialized version that didn’t reflect the real-world product.

These setbacks appear to have pushed Meta to redouble its efforts. The company’s AI superintelligence unit — which now includes former OpenAI, DeepMind, and GitHub talent — is being structured similarly to Google DeepMind, operating as a core engine to power future Meta products, including virtual assistants, business agents, and advanced developer tools.

OpenAI Pushes Back

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company has been under scrutiny from regulators and partners alike in recent months, has downplayed the poaching spree, saying “none of our best people have decided to take him up on that.” But the growing number of high-profile exits tells a more complicated story, especially with researchers involved in OpenAI’s core reasoning and reinforcement learning efforts now switching allegiance.

Tensions between the two companies have reportedly deepened. Meta is said to be courting AI startups for acquisitions or partnerships — including Scale AI, where former CEO Alexandr Wang is now part of Meta’s superintelligence team, and failed talks with Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machines Lab, and Perplexity.

Why This Matters

AI talent is the new oil, and companies like Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are locked in a battle to secure the best minds. Unlike traditional tech recruitment, these roles aren’t just about staffing — they determine who builds the next generation of frontier models.

Meta’s push into reasoning models aims to address a key performance gap. OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek have all released advanced models that handle complex, multistep problem-solving tasks — and Meta wants to catch up quickly. The success of that effort could define the company’s long-term competitiveness in both the consumer and enterprise AI markets.

In the meantime, OpenAI is reportedly preparing to release a public-facing reasoning model in the coming weeks, which could raise the stakes even further for Meta and others racing to lead in this space.

However, the bottom line is that Meta is building an elite task force to challenge OpenAI and other leading AI companies at their strongest point — reasoning and autonomy.