Meta Platforms Inc
Fueling this ambition, Meta has poached top talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet Inc's
Talent Heist: Building An AI Dream Team
From OpenAI, Meta recruited seven researchers, including Trapit Bansal and Shuchao Bi, experts in large language models and reinforcement learning. Google DeepMind lost Jack Rae, a machine learning pioneer, and Huiwen Chang, an image generation specialist.
Apple's Ruoming Pang, former head of its Foundation Models team behind Genmoji and Siri upgrades, joined MSL with a reported multimillion-dollar package. These defections bolster MSL's expertise in multimodal AI and reasoning systems. Meta also hired from Anthropic, including Anton Bakhtin, a Claude developer, and inference expert Joel Pobar, enhancing its technical depth.
Led by Alexandr Wang, ex-Scale AI CEO, and Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, MSL is backed by Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI for superior data resources. While Meta denied claims of $100 million signing bonuses, competitive compensation has drawn elite talent.
Powering AGI: Meta's Strategic Hires
MSL aims to integrate advanced AI into Meta's platforms, such as Instagram and Smart Glasses, leveraging its billion-user reach. However, AGI's technical and ethical challenges raise doubts, with critics recalling Meta's metaverse struggles.
By luring defectors from OpenAI, DeepMind and Apple, Meta is building a formidable AI empire. The success of MSL hinges on this talent's ability to deliver groundbreaking innovations in a competitive field, positioning Meta as a serious contender in the AGI race.
