SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI has hired prominent artificial-intelligence researcher Ruoming Pang from Meta, underlining the intensifying contest among big tech firms for elite AI talent.
According to The Information, which cited an OpenAI spokesperson, Pang joined the ChatGPT maker last week after leaving Meta. At Meta, he oversaw AI infrastructure at the Superintelligence Labs, the unit tasked with building next-generation advanced models.
Pang had joined Meta only around seven months ago from Apple, where he worked on artificial-intelligence initiatives. Bloomberg has reported that his compensation package at Meta was valued at more than $200 million over several years, highlighting how aggressively firms are paying to secure top researchers.
OpenAI reportedly pursued Pang for months before finalising the hire. The move comes amid a fierce recruitment drive across Silicon Valley as companies race to dominate the next phase of AI development. Multi-million-dollar pay packages, equity incentives and senior leadership roles have become routine weapons in the fight for specialists capable of building large-scale AI systems.
As generative AI adoption accelerates and model training demands ever-greater computing power, infrastructure expertise has become a prized asset. Pang’s experience in running large AI platforms is expected to strengthen OpenAI’s ability to scale its models and expand commercial offerings.
