OpenAI hires Tesla, xAI, and Meta engineers as AI talent battle heats up

OpenAI just made a strong move in the ongoing race for AI talent, picking up four notable engineers from some of its biggest competitors. According to Wired, the hires include top names from Tesla, xAI, and Meta. Remember, these are the very companies that have poached talent from OpenAI in recent months, or at least tried to do so.

The additions include David Lau, former VP of software engineering at Tesla, and Angela Fan, who previously worked as an AI researcher at Meta. Joining them are Uday Ruddarraju and Mike Dalton, both former engineers at Elon Musk’s xAI and ex-Robinhood staffers.

Ruddarraju and Dalton helped build xAI’s massive Colossus supercomputer, which ran on more than 200,000 GPUs. All four engineers are now part of OpenAI’s scaling team, focused on managing the backend systems and infrastructure that support its growing AI ambitions.

Ruddarraju described infrastructure as “where research meets reality,” saying he’s especially excited about OpenAI’s Stargate project. Lau noted that “working toward safe and reliable AI” is the most meaningful next step in his career.

This recruitment wave follows Meta’s recent hiring spree, where its new Superintelligence Labs pulled in at least four former OpenAI engineers. For that very reason, OpenAI recently warned staff to ignore Meta’s ‘ridiculous’ offers as the poaching battle escalates. Moreover, it even shut down for a week, citing employee burnout.