Meta poaches three top AI researchers from OpenAI, who had poached them from Deepmind

Update:

Lucas Beyer has confirmed that he, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai are joining Meta. On X, Beyer addressed rumors about his contract, saying he did not receive a $100 million signing bonus - a figure previously floated by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, though not specifically in connection with this hiring. Beyer says he will remain in Zürich.

Image: Lucas Beyer via X

It's unclear whether Altman actually heard those numbers internally or was just trying to disrupt Zuckerberg's recruiting spree by pushing Meta to offer bigger salaries.

Original article:

Meta has hired three top AI researchers from OpenAI: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai.

All three are known for their work in machine learning and computer vision, including developing scalable image models and the Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture.

They had only recently opened OpenAI's Zurich office in late 2024 and previously worked at Google Deepmind.

According to reports, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally led recruitment efforts after Meta's latest AI model failed to meet expectations. He reportedly offered compensation packages worth up to $100 million.

Meta also recently invested about $14 billion in AI data labeling company Scale AI, reportedly to attract skilled employees.