At least two prominent AI researchers have left Meta's Superintelligence Labs just weeks after coming on board.
Avi Verma and Ethan Knight each spent less than a month at Meta before returning to OpenAI, WIRED reports. Knight had previously worked at Elon Musk's AI startup xAI.
Chaya Nayak, who led generative AI efforts at Meta for years, is also heading to OpenAI. The reasons for these rapid exits haven't been made public. For Meta, which is pouring billions into building its own superintelligence lab and aggressively recruiting top talent, losing key hires this quickly is a major setback.
AI researcher Rishabh Agarwal announced his departure from Meta on Monday. "I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk," Agarwal wrote on X, calling it a "tough decision."
Agarwal, who previously worked at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, joined Meta in April before moving to the superintelligence team. In his farewell post, he praised Meta's "talent and compute density," but ultimately decided to walk away.
It's unclear why building superintelligence at Meta lost its appeal for Agarwal. He may have doubts about the technical direction, or there could be friction inside the lab, like pay gaps between longtime staff and new hires.
An isolated top team with a billion-dollar budget
Meta launched Superintelligence Labs just a few weeks ago, aiming to outpace rivals like OpenAI in the race to build advanced general AI. The team is made up of researchers recruited from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Apple, and reportedly operates almost entirely in isolation from the rest of Meta.
The lab reports directly to Mark Zuckerberg and has full access to Meta's infrastructure. It is led by Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI. Even Yann LeCun, Meta's longtime head of AI and leader of the FAIR research group, now reports to Wang.
LeCun's FAIR remains as Meta's core research unit, tasked with developing new ideas for large-scale model training as needed. FAIR is now joined by three other groups: the TBD Lab for large models, a product-focused research team, and a central infrastructure group. The previous AGI division has been dissolved.
Meta has been aggressively poaching talent for Superintelligence Labs, reportedly offering new hires up to $300 million in total compensation over four years. Several top researchers have left OpenAI for Meta recently. OpenAI's head of HR has called Meta's recruiting tactics "desperate" and "unethical."
