OpenAI Makes a Blockbuster Move to Poach Four Top Engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta According to internal information obtained by WIRED, OpenAI has successfully recruited four executive - level engineers from its competitors. This includes David Lau, the former vice president of software engineering at Tesla, who has joined the company's Scaling Team. The news was initially announced by Greg Brockman, a co - founder of OpenAI, in the internal Slack channel on Tuesday. The other three core members who joined are: Uday Ruddarraju: Former head of infrastructure engineering at xAI and X Corp. Mike Dalton: Former infrastructure engineer at xAI Angela Fan: Former artificial intelligence researcher at Meta It's worth noting that Dalton and Ruddarraju previously worked together at Robinhood. During their time at xAI, they jointly participated in building a supercomputer named "Colossus," which is huge in scale and equipped with over 200,000 GPU cards. Hannah Wong, a spokesperson for OpenAI, said: "We are delighted to welcome these new members to our Scaling Team. We are committed to continuously building and integrating world - class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission of bringing the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people." Why is the Scaling Team so important? OpenAI's Scaling Team is responsible for managing the underlying hardware, software systems, and data centers, including a new joint - venture project called "Stargate," which focuses on building AI - specific infrastructure. Although these behind - the - scenes efforts are not as eye - catching as star products like ChatGPT, they are the key for OpenAI to achieve its ultimate goal - artificial general intelligence (AGI) - and maintain its lead over competitors. When interviewed by WIRED, Ruddarraju said: "Infrastructure is the bridge between research and reality, and OpenAI has successfully proven this. Especially the Stargate project, which is huge in scale and can be regarded as a moon - landing operation in the field of infrastructure. It perfectly aligns with the major system - level challenges that I'm passionate about." And David Lau said: "For me, accelerating the realization of safe and human - beneficial artificial general intelligence is the most meaningful mission I can envision in the next stage of my career." The AI Talent War Heats Up Continuously Recently, the competition for talent resources among major technology giants has intensified. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has successfully poached at least 7 researchers from OpenAI with high salaries and abundant computing resources. This series of poaching actions has prompted Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to recently tell internal employees that the company may re - evaluate the salary structure of researchers to cope with the increasingly fierce talent competition. Zuckerberg has also launched a poaching offensive against several employees of the start - up Thinking Machines Lab, which is led by Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI, and John Schulman, a co - founder of OpenAI. This high - profile recruitment of top talents by OpenAI from companies like Tesla and xAI is likely to exacerbate the already tense relationship between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Musk co - founded OpenAI in 2015 but left three years later due to differences in development direction and leadership. Now, Musk is suing OpenAI on the grounds that it has deviated from its original intention of "developing AI for the benefit of humanity." OpenAI has counter - sued Musk, accusing him of unfair competition and interfering with its business. Behind the Intensifying Competition in the AI Industry Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the talent competition in the AI industry has been fierce. Recently, industry researchers and executives have even started to publicly discuss the possibility of achieving "Superintelligence" (i.e., artificial intelligence that surpasses human capabilities). Whoever can achieve this disruptive breakthrough first will be able to define the new pattern of the future AI industry. This has prompted major companies to re - evaluate their recruitment strategies and accelerate the reserve of outstanding talents. The success of ChatGPT also clearly shows that "Scaling" is the key to promoting the progress of AI. With the use of more data and greater computing resources, the capabilities of AI models continue to increase, and they can even exhibit new skills that were not foreseen before. In addition, OpenAI and Microsoft are collaborating on a plan to promote AI training in the education field across the United States.