OpenAI Hires Senior Engineers From Tesla, xAI, Meta Amid Legal Dispute

OpenAI has significantly strengthened its backend scaling team by hiring four senior engineers from rival companies, including Tesla, Meta, Elon Musk's xAI, and X. Notable hires include David Lau, former Vice President of Software Engineering at Tesla, and Uday Ruddarraju, former head of infrastructure engineering at xAI and X. These engineers bring expertise in large-scale computing infrastructure, including work on the Colossus supercomputer at xAI, which features over 200,000 GPUs. Their skills will be applied to OpenAI's ambitious Stargate program, focused on developing next-generation AI supercomputing infrastructure. This hiring surge comes amid intense competition for AI talent, with Meta also aggressively recruiting engineers from OpenAI. OpenAI's cofounder Greg Brockman and spokesperson Hannah Wong emphasized the importance of these hires in accelerating progress toward safe and well-aligned artificial general intelligence.