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Core Memory · 4 min · Dec 1, 2025

OpenAI focuses recruiting on the people it most needs

Mark Chen · Chief Research Officer, OpenAI

Mark Chen says Meta approached half his direct reports before hiring any OpenAI researchers, and all declined.

In this episode

Full analysis
  1. 8:16OpenAI funds exploration to find the next research paradigm6 min
  2. 59:58Pre-training still has room to scalePro pick 4 min
  3. 1:09:16OpenAI wants AI to conduct research end to endPro pick 6 min
  4. 1:33:49OpenAI avoids rewarding models for human-pleasing reasoning4 min
  5. 47:17Chen rallied OpenAI researchers during the leadership crisis3 min
  6. 1:15:25OpenAI says it could use 10 times more compute3 min
  7. 23:49Models bring different intuitions to research problems4 min
  8. 0:00OpenAI focuses recruiting on the people it most needs4 min
Up next · Machine Learning Street TalkA new architecture must beat Transformers by a wide margin8:07
“The game is not to retain every single person in the world. It's to trust in this pipeline”
Mark Chenat 3:47 · Core Memory
3:47

Takeaways

  1. Meta approached half of Chen’s direct reports; all declined.
  2. OpenAI does not match Meta’s offers dollar for dollar.
  3. Focus on key people and the pipeline that develops talent.

About this segment

Mark Chen says Meta approached half his direct reports before hiring any OpenAI researchers, and all declined. OpenAI competes through its research program, not dollar-for-dollar offers.

Mark Chen

Mark Chen is chief research officer at OpenAI.

Led the teams behind DALL-E and Codex and visual perception in GPT-4, now oversees OpenAI's research.

  • Ashlee Vance, Host · CEO, Core Memory

    Wrote the best-selling biography Elon Musk; covered tech for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist and The New York Times.

From “How OpenAI Shapes Its Research And What's Next - EP 46 Mark Chen”, Dec 1, 2025. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 0:00

    On the recruitment wars, I mean, this got a lot of attention, clearly, and it looked like Meta was quite aggressive. What exactly does this tit for tat look like? What stage are we at? Yeah, I mean, there is a pool of talent, right? And everyone kind of knows who they are. And I think many companies have realized that one of the key ingredients, not the only important ingredient, but one of the key ingredients to building a great AI lab is to get the best talent. And I think not a surprise that, you know, Meta has been aggressively employing the strategy. You know, we haven't sat back idly. And I actually want to tell the story from OpenAI's point of view. I think a lot has been made in the media of, oh, you know, there's this unidirectional flow of talent over to Meta. But the way that I've seen it is, you know, Meta,

  2. 0:56

    They've gone after a lot of people quite unsuccessfully. So just to give you context, within my staff, within my direct reports, before they hired anyone from OpenAI, I think they went after half of my direct reports and they all declined. And of course, if they have something like $10 billion of capital per year to deploy towards talent, they're going to get someone. So I actually feel like we've been fairly good about protecting our top talent.

  3. 1:26

    And, you know, it's been kind of interesting and fun to see it escalate over time. You know, some interesting stories here are Zuck actually went and hand-delivered soup to people that he was trying to recruit from us. Like a trash, just to show how far he would... Yeah, I think he hand-cooked the soup. And, you know, it was shocking to me at the time. But, you know, over time, I've kind of updated towards these things can be effective in their own way, right?

  4. 1:56

    And, you know, I've also delivered soup to people that we've been recruiting from Meta. You're doing a soup counting. I've thought of, you know, if I had an offsite, the next offsite for my staff, I'm going to take them to a cooking class. Okay. And, yeah, I mean, it's just been, yeah, but I do think, you know, there's something I've learned about recruiting. Did you cook your soup? uh me it's better if you get like michelin star soup you know what i mean yeah no no no i think day is very very good and um probably better than any soup i could cook um but yeah i i do think there is something i've learned about you know just um how to go uh aggressively after top talent and i think uh the thing i've been actually very inspired by is that um you know at open ai um Even among people who have left for Meta, I haven't heard anyone say AGI is going to be developed at Meta first.

  5. 2:53

    Everyone is very confident in the research program at OpenAI. And one thing that I've made very clear to my staff, to the whole research orgies, we don't counter dollar for dollar with Meta. And the multiples that below what Meta is offering, that people are very happy to stay at OpenAI. gives me so much conviction that, you know, people really believe in the upside and believe that we're going to do it.

  6. 3:21

    And Alex, Alex Wayne, he used to be one of the math companies, the, the, I'm sure you guys hung out. Yeah. I mean, I have hung out with Alex a handful of times, but we don't do much anymore. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Why did soup become the thing? It was just, it just. I don't know. You know, it's, there's been soup, there's been flowers, there's been anything you can think of under the sun. But, um, I don't know.

  7. 3:44

    i think you know life's an adventure i i play into the meme yeah yeah is there any any poker strategy to employ like as you're you're thinking well again i think it really goes back to what i've said about the media narrative um The game is not to retain every single person in the world. It's to trust in this pipeline that we have for developing talent and to understand who the key people we need to keep are and to keep those.

  8. 4:11

    And I think we've done a phenomenal job at that.