OpenAI Poaches High-Level Engineers from Tesla, xAI, X, and Meta
AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication
In the latest development in the ongoing rivalry between Elon Musk and OpenAI, the latter has reportedly hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, X, and Meta. This news comes as a significant blow to Musk, who previously served as a board member and co-founder of OpenAI. According to an internal Slack message sent by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, the engineers who have joined OpenAI include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI's head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton, and Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta. Lau has been a key figure at Tesla, serving as the company's VP of Software Engineering since 2017. Prior to that, he worked in various divisions, including firmware, platforms, and system integration. In a statement to Wired, Lau expressed his excitement about joining OpenAI, stating that "accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career." Ruddarraju and Dalton, both of whom were instrumental in developing the Colossus supercomputer at xAI, will likely play a significant role in OpenAI's Stargate program. Ruddarraju told Wired that "infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully" and that Stargate is an "infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on." OpenAI's hiring spree is seen as a strategic move to bolster its capabilities, particularly in the areas of infrastructure and research. The company's spokesperson, Hannah Wong, stated that "our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people." This development comes amidst an ongoing lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI. Musk is suing OpenAI for shifting towards a for-profit model and accepting a significant investment from Microsoft. OpenAI has retaliated with a counterlawsuit, alleging that Musk is interfering with the company's business and engaging in unfair competition practices. It is worth noting that xAI, a rival to OpenAI, is projected to become profitable by 2027, according to Bloomberg's sources. In contrast, OpenAI is looking at 2029 as the year it could become cash flow positive.
