A week after Meta announced a hiring freeze for its AI “dream team,” at least three significant departures have been identified by Wired. Avi Verma left Meta to return to OpenAI just a month after being hired. Ethan Knight, who began his career at OpenAI and briefly joined Meta, has also returned. The third departure is Rishabh Agarwal, who publicly announced leaving Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, stating he wanted to take “a different kind of risk” after years at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta.
Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold downplayed the situation, remarking that it’s common for recruits to decide to stay with their current job amid intense hiring battles. Despite such assurances, Chaya Nayak, a decade-long veteran at Meta and director of generative AI product management, is also reportedly moving to OpenAI. The rivalry between Meta and OpenAI over talent has intensified recently, with OpenAI’s Sam Altman describing Meta’s recruitment tactics as “distasteful.”
