A key staffer at OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has moved to Chinese big tech corporation Tencent. The move, made as competition among global IT corporations to secure artificial intelligence (AI) talent intensifies, is drawing industry attention.
Bloomberg News reported on the 12th (local time) that researcher Yao Sunyu (29), who worked at OpenAI, recently joined Tencent. Yao will be responsible for integrating AI technology into various Tencent services.
Yao Sunyu graduated from Tsinghua University in China and earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University in the United States in his 20s. After a Google internship, Yao has been in charge of AI agent research at OpenAI since Jun. last year.
During the job change process, Tencent is said to have offered terms worth up to 100 million yuan, about 19.5 billion won. This aligns with the recent trend in which Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has recruited researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Apple, offering compensation packages of up to $100 million.
Competition for AI talent has grown even fiercer recently. Following Meta's scouting of more than 50 people to bolster its superintelligence lab, other global corporations have also launched aggressive hiring drives.
Bloomberg called Yao Sunyu's move "one of the most notable cases of U.S. AI industry talent moving to China."