New Delhi: OpenAI has made a big move in the AI talent wars. The company has pulled in four senior engineers from Tesla, xAI, X, and Meta, directly hitting at some of its biggest competitors. The announcement came from an internal Slack message sent by OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and was first reported by Wired on July 9.
The engineers will now work on OpenAI’s scaling team, which handles backend systems, large-scale data infrastructure, and projects like Stargate, a joint venture focused on building AI supercomputing infrastructure. The hires come at a time when OpenAI is engaged in a legal fight with Elon Musk, who co-founded the company but now leads its rival, xAI.
Who got hired by OpenAI?
The new faces joining OpenAI include some big names:
- David Lau, former Vice President of Software Engineering at Tesla
- Uday Ruddarraju, former Head of Infrastructure Engineering at xAI and X
- Mike Dalton, infrastructure engineer from xAI
- Angela Fan, AI researcher from Meta
Lau had been at Tesla since 2017, working across software, firmware, and platform teams. “It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” he said in a statement to Wired.
Ruddarraju and Dalton, who earlier worked together at Robinhood, helped build Colossus at xAI; a supercomputer with over 2 lakh GPUs. That’s the kind of scale OpenAI seems to be going after with Stargate.
“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” said Ruddarraju. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”
Fan, who previously worked at Meta as an AI researcher, rounds out the list.
What is the scaling team at OpenAI?
The scaling team handles everything behind the scenes, managing massive data centers, optimizing training infrastructure, and making sure researchers have the horsepower needed to train giant models. It may not get as much attention as ChatGPT or other user-facing products, but it is what keeps OpenAI running.
In her statement to Wired, OpenAI spokesperson Hannah Wong said, “We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team. Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”
Greg Brockman also posted a welcome note on X, saying, “welcome david lau, mike dalton, uday ruddarraju, and angela fan!”
Timing matters
The hires are not just routine onboarding. They come in the middle of a high-profile lawsuit between Musk and OpenAI. Musk has accused OpenAI of going against its non-profit roots, especially after it took multi-billion dollar investments from Microsoft. In return, OpenAI has filed a counterclaim accusing Musk of interfering with its business.
And now, OpenAI has responded, not in court filings, but by luring away some of the engineers who were building rival infrastructure.
