Meta Recruits OpenAI Researchers to Bolster Superintelligence Push

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has added three notable scientists — Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai — to the company’s growing team focused on superintelligence, according to a June 25 report from The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

All three researchers previously worked at OpenAI’s Zurich office, where they were instrumental in computer vision and multimodal AI research. Their work contributed to advancements in foundational models and efficient training techniques — a skill set Meta is looking to scale as it doubles down on its AGI ambitions.

The hires reflect Meta’s accelerating investment in frontier AI talent, particularly in Europe. The company’s AI research division, FAIR (Facebook AI Research), has grown rapidly over the past year, with Zuckerberg publicly stating his goal to build “artificial general intelligence” and open-source it for global benefit.

These moves come as the AI talent war intensifies across major tech firms. Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic are all racing to attract top researchers capable of building large-scale, multi-modal models that can reason, code, and learn autonomously.

Meta’s strategic recruitment arrives at a time of heightened investor focus on AI. The company’s shares (NASDAQ: META) are up over 43% year-to-date as of June 25, 2025, driven largely by optimism around AI integration across its product stack — including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Analysts at Morgan Stanley raised their price target on META to $600 earlier this month, citing AI monetization potential and Reels ad growth (source: Bloomberg).

By securing former OpenAI talent, Meta strengthens its position in the global AI arms race, particularly in the realm of high-stakes AGI research — where breakthroughs could transform not just products, but entire industries.

Meta has not issued an official comment on the hires. OpenAI also declined to respond.