OpenAI poaches 3 senior engineers from DeepMind

The highly competitive AI talent market continues to see major moves as leading companies vie for top researchers and engineers to advance their artificial intelligence capabilities.

Key development: OpenAI has recruited three senior computer vision and machine learning engineers from Google DeepMind to work in its new Zurich office, focusing on multimodal AI development.

• Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai will join OpenAI’s efforts to advance multimodal AI, which combines different types of inputs like text, images, and audio
• The three researchers previously worked together at DeepMind and will continue their collaboration at OpenAI
• Beyer has been an active commentator on OpenAI’s developments, maintaining a following of over 70,000 on X

Strategic context: OpenAI has been expanding its multimodal capabilities while growing its global presence through new office locations.

• The company launched its text-to-image platform Dall-E in 2021 and has since integrated various multimodal features into ChatGPT
• OpenAI is developing Sora, a new generative AI video product, though it remains unreleased
• The company is establishing new offices in multiple global locations including New York City, Seattle, Brussels, Paris, and Singapore

Industry talent dynamics: The AI sector is experiencing intense competition for top talent, with companies offering substantial compensation packages and researchers frequently moving between major players.

• Annual compensation packages for top AI researchers can approach seven figures
• Microsoft recently acquired most of Inflection AI’s team, including their AI lead Mustafa Suleyman
• Google reportedly spent $2.7 billion to reacquire Character.AI founder Noam Shazeer

Notable departures: OpenAI has also seen several key figures leave the organization in recent months.

• Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist, departed to launch Safe Superintelligence
• Former CTO Mira Murati left in September and is reportedly raising funds for a new AI venture
• Tim Brooks, who previously led research on OpenAI’s video generator, moved to DeepMind

Geographic significance: Zurich’s emergence as a European tech hub has attracted major AI companies and talent.

• The city hosts ETH Zurich, a prestigious research university known for computer science
• Apple has reportedly recruited AI experts from Google for its Zurich laboratory
• The three new OpenAI hires are already based in Zurich, facilitating their transition

Forward outlook: The continuous movement of top AI talent between major companies suggests an increasingly fluid and competitive landscape that could reshape the development of artificial intelligence technologies, while potentially raising concerns about knowledge concentration among a small number of leading firms.