OpenAI researcher Jason Wei, who worked on the o3 models and Deep research feature, is leaving the company to join a new superintelligence division, Meta, WIRED reports, citing internal sources.
Wei joined OpenAI in 2023 after working at Google, where he researched chain-of-thought, a method of training AI by solving complex problems step by step. At OpenAI, he focused on reinforcement learning, which is now considered one of the most promising areas of AI development.
Another OpenAI researcher, Hyun Won Jeong, who has participated in similar projects, including the development of o1 models, has also joined Meta. Both experts’ profiles on OpenAI’s corporate Slack have now been deactivated. Neither the companies nor the researchers themselves have provided official comments at this time.
Meta has been actively recruiting experienced AI engineers, offering contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. In July, it was announced that the company had formed a superintelligence team, which has already been joined by several former OpenAI employees, a top Apple executive, and the CEO of Scale AI.
Also recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is building supercomputers to serve superintelligence, the area of which will be comparable to Manhattan.