The global race for top AI talent is intensifying, and Meta has scored a notable win. According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta has successfully hired three prominent researchers from OpenAI — Lukas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai — who played a key role in establishing OpenAI’s Zurich office.
This move is part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing recruitment push to build a powerful “superintelligence” team. Reports indicate that Zuckerberg has been offering compensation packages exceeding $100 million to attract the best minds in AI. He’s also been personally messaging top researchers via WhatsApp and hosting private dinners at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.
While some of these efforts have paid off — including the high-profile recruitment of Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, backed by a $14 billion investment — others have not. OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, for example, declined Meta’s offers and instead launched their own startups.
In a recent podcast with his brother Jack, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed Meta’s charm offensive: “I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on those offers,” he said.
The hiring of the three Zurich-based researchers suggests that Meta’s aggressive strategy is starting to yield results. As competition in the AI field grows fiercer, companies like Meta and OpenAI are locked in a high-stakes battle not just over technology — but over the people building it.
