Researchers Jason Wei and Hyung Won Chung are said to be joining Meta’s superintelligence lab, the latest of several high-profile OpenAI researchers and developers to be plucked by the social media giant. That would make this the second big move in as many years for Wei and Won Chung, who left Google’s Brain research group to join OpenAI in 2023.
OpenAI’s ex-CTO, who also briefly stepped into the CEO role during Sam Altman’s high-profile ouster, said Tuesday that a16z led the round, with participation from NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, and Jane Street. She added that the company would share its first product “in the next couple months.”
I revealed last week that OpenAI was getting ready to release its open-weight model as early as this week. Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it’s delayed because “we need time to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas.” Like I wrote in Notepad, OpenAI’s release dates often change like the wind.
The new lawsuit says io co-founder Tang Tan admitted that he received confidential information, including CAD drawings of Iyo’s ear-worn computer, from the startup’s former design and manufacturing lead who was seeking a job from io at the time.
Last week, OpenAI closed the deal to buy Jony Ive’s io and build AI hardware, despite the on-going trademark lawsuit with Iyo.
Zuckerberg is picking off top talent from across the industry, and OpenAI might be more vulnerable than most.
The OpenAI CEO wore a pair of bold glasses while talking to reporters at the Sun Valley conference, and he says they aren’t smart glasses and that he doesn’t like the form factor. Altman briefly teased OpenAI’s upcoming hardware, but only to say that “it’s going to be great.”
He also touches on the talent war between OpenAI and Meta.
Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic have funded a $23 million training hub in downtown Manhattan that will train teachers how to use AI tools and apply them in educational environments. The “National Academy for AI Instruction” will provide free access and training to the nearly 2 million members of the American Federation of Teachers.
This is the latest of several efforts across the US to make AI usage the new normal for faculty members and their students.
Bloomberg reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s latest high-priced AI hire is Apple’s foundation AI model leader, Ruoming Pang, based on an offer worth “tens of millions of dollars per year,” plus Yuanzhi Li from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic.
Last week, former Apple AI lead Daniel Gross confirmed his departure from the startup Safe Superintelligence Inc., reportedly also to join Meta’s team. Bloomberg’s sources said Pang’s departure “...could be the start of a string of exits.”
[bloomberg.com]
OpenAI will rent “additional capacity from Oracle totaling about 4.5 gigawatts of data center power in the US,” Bloomberg reports.
[bloomberg.com]
