Three top OpenAI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Xiaohua Zhai, and Alexander Kolesnikov, have joined Meta's AI division. Contrary to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's claims, they deny receiving a $100 million signing bonus, debunking the rumors of offers.
Three of OpenAI's best researchers were hired by Mark Zuckerberg for Meta, but unlike what Sam Altman has said, they did not receive a $100 million sign-on bonus. Altman's assertions that Meta paid $100 million to the OpenAI staff to join their superintelligence project were rejected by Lucas Beyer, a former OpenAI researcher.
Here's what Lucas Beyer said
Beyer announced this shift to Meta with his colleagues on X (formerly Twitter), writing, "No, we did not get 100M sign-on, that's fake news." Beyer's explanation follows OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's admission on his brother's podcast that Meta had been luring away his best employees with "giant offers" exceeding $100 million. Beyer revealed this week that he and his colleagues Xiaohua Zhai and Alexander Kolesnikov will be leaving OpenAI's Zurich office to join Meta's new AI section.
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Meta's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth echoed Beyer's sentiments during an internal company meeting Thursday, calling Altman "dishonest" and noting that the OpenAI chief was "countering all these offers" while creating inflated market expectations.
Bosworth stressed that only "a very, very small number of people" in high leadership positions are eligible for such enormous payouts.The three researchers joined OpenAI in December 2024 to launch the company's Zurich branch after previously collaborating at Google DeepMind. Zuckerberg's ambitious superintelligence project has made a huge talent acquisition with their move to Meta.
