Meta AI workforce exodus: $1 billion talent poaching allegedly leads to departure of eight essential employees, according to recent reports
Meta, the social media giant, has seen a series of departures from its Superintelligence Lab (MSL) in recent months, potentially slowing down the company's progress in artificial general intelligence as CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hoped.
The most recent departure is that of Rishabh Agarwal, who joined Meta from Google DeepMind in April, but has announced his departure from the company. Agarwal, without revealing his next move, mentioned his desire to take "a different kind of risk" as his reason for leaving.
Another notable departure is that of Bert Maher, a longtime Meta employee who recently left to join Anthropic. The next moves of Maher, as well as those of Aram Markosyan, a research scientist focused on safety and fairness for large AI models, remain unclear.
Chi-Hao Wu, an AI specialist, left MSL to become the chief AI officer at the startup Memories.ai. No new information about the current status or future plans of Memories.ai or Anthropic was given.
The departures of these employees from MSL have raised questions about the future of the lab. This is particularly significant given the high-profile hires that MSL made since its announcement, including Frank Chu from Apple, Ruoming Pang, a former Apple AI foundational model chief, and Jian Zhang from Apple's robotics team.
Frank Chu joined Meta's Superintelligence Labs to work on AI cloud infrastructure despite a hiring pause, while Ruoming Pang received substantial compensation for his move. Jian Zhang moved into Meta's Robotics Studio, shifting focus from Apple's AI and robotics projects to Meta's efforts in Menlo Park.
The departures are not limited to MSL, as Afroz Mohiuddin, a senior staff engineer, left Meta to join OpenAI. No new details about the current status or future plans of OpenAI, where Chaya Nayak, Meta's director of generative AI product management, and Mohiuddin have joined, were provided.
Adding to the departures, Avi Verma and Ethan Knight have left MSL and returned to OpenAI after short stints at the lab.
Tony Liu, a manager of PyTorch GPU systems, announced his departure to start a newsletter on scaling AI systems. No new details about the next moves of Liu were provided.
These departures come after Meta's Superintelligence Lab, named Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), was established. At least eight employees have left MSL within two months of its announcement.
These developments underscore the challenges faced by Meta in its pursuit of artificial general intelligence and the questions that remain about the future of its Superintelligence Lab.
