All the three companies above the $3 trillion market capitalisation threshold are IT companies. Hence, there is no gainsaying that revenues rule the greatness of these companies, notwithstanding the great product and services they have delivered to transform human life and the world. The AI Age has brought the fight to individual packages too. Every single resource in AI with a proven track record is an asset which can bring laurels to the company, either by leading the ML/ AI vertical or lab or being a critical resource in it.
Though unknown then yet they are the nature of resources that brought OpenAI to the top. No IT behemoth was ready to be left behind. Some got onto the bandwagon and started making their presence felt with the competitive AI LLM models. No recognised big tech player was ready to be left out of this race. Existential it might be. Meta found itself in such a predicament even with its previous efforts borne out by the product launches and responses in the recent past, which forced it to change its strategy, if they were to be the race.
Meta needed world class resources with a proven track record. What was the way out? It was poaching. Where would a large number of resources be? The market leader and host of others. Over a dozen top-tier AI researchers have moved to Meta recently from OpenAI, Antropic, DeepMind, Apple etc. It ranges from Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang to Apple’s Ruoming Pang. Though it is impacting many companies yet OpenAI seems to have bore the brunt. At least 8 senior researchers have left Open AI in the past few weeks to join Meta’s AI teams. This includes three from OpenAI’s Zurich office – Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai. 5 key researchers on core GPT-4/o- series architectures.
Seemingly, on the receiving end, OpenAI CEO broke silence when asked about the talent battle with a brief “fine” and “good.” Altman has not talked to Meta CEO since the poaching began. Measured public tone contrasts sharply with his more combative internal messaging to OpenAI employees. In a fiery Slack message earlier he said they “didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list.” He declared that “missionaries will beat mercenaries.” On the question of retaining talent, Altman emphasized OpenAI’s mission-driven approach; “having a great mission, really talented people and trying to build a great research lab and a great company too. “Can everything be taken at its face value?”
POACHING TO SUCCESSFUL AI PRODUCT CREATION CAN TURN OUT TO BE A LONG AND TEDIOUS GAME, WITH BARELY ANY CERTAINTY.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.