Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has poached three OpenAI researchers to join his superintelligence efforts, a recruiting coup intended to help steer Meta Platforms out of an AI crisis. The social-media giant hired Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai, who were all working in OpenAI’s Zurich office, according to people familiar with the matter. The three set up OpenAI’s office in Zurich late last year. Before that, they worked together at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI unit. A spokeswoman for OpenAI confirmed that the three researchers have left the company. Zuckerberg has been on an intense recruiting drive to right the company’s AI efforts after the release of its latest model fell flat. In some cases, he has offered researchers $100 million to join a new team focused on building superintelligence, or AI that is smarter than humans. His company recently invested $14 billion in AI startup Scale and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead the new team. Zuckerberg has also tried to recruit OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman to join. Neither have. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said onstage at an event Tuesday that he wasn’t worried about Zuckerberg’s blitz. “It’s like OK, Zuckerberg is doing some new insane thing. What’s next?” he said. Last week, Altman said his best people hadn’t left for Meta.

Full exclusive : Meta has poached three researchers from OpenAI’s Zurich office, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, for its superintelligence efforts.