Meta successfully lured three top artificial intelligence researchers from OpenAI: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Zhai Xiaohua, sparking widespread attention in the industry.
These three researchers are renowned in the fields of machine learning and computer vision, and are known for their groundbreaking work in developing scalable image models and the Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture. Notably, they previously worked at Google DeepMind and had just participated in opening an OpenAI office in Zurich at the end of 2024.
In response to rumors about a huge signing bonus, Beyer clarified on X, denying the claim of receiving a $100 million signing bonus. This figure was previously mentioned by OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman but was not explicitly linked to this personnel movement. Beyer also stated that he will continue to work in Zurich.
According to insiders, Meta's large-scale hiring effort was personally led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, following the underperformance of Meta's latest AI model. To attract top talent, Meta offered a compensation package as high as $1 billion.
In addition to talent recruitment, Meta is making significant investments in AI infrastructure. It has been reported that the company recently invested around $1.4 billion in the AI data labeling company Scale AI, further strengthening its technical capabilities and talent pool in the field of artificial intelligence.
This series of actions highlights the intense competition among tech giants in the AI talent war and Meta's determination to catch up with its competitors in the field of artificial intelligence.