Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stirred excitement in Silicon Valley by launching a new Superintelligence division, attracting top AI talent from rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Apple. He reportedly offered lucrative compensation packages and personal meetings to bring them on board. However, just weeks after its formation, several key hires have already exited the company.
Among the early departures is Ethan Knight, a machine learning scientist who joined only weeks ago. Avi Verma, a former OpenAI researcher, completed onboarding but never showed up for his first day. Rishabh Agarwal, another research scientist, left after just five months, stating that although Meta’s pitch was compelling, he felt drawn to pursue a different kind of risk.
Even long-time Meta veterans in the generative AI space, such as Chaya Nayak and Loredana Crisan, have left after nearly a decade at the company. Notably, ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao nearly returned to OpenAI days after joining Meta but was persuaded to stay with a promotion to Chief AI Scientist, announced by Zuckerberg himself.
The exits are reportedly tied to dissatisfaction with leadership under Alexandr Wang and frustrations over internal bureaucracy and competition for computing resources.
