Microsoft-backed OpenAI (MSFT) has hired several top engineers from competing companies to join its scaling team, according to WIRED. This includes David Lau, who was previously Tesla’s (TSLA) Vice President of Software Engineering. The news was shared in an internal Slack message by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, who leads the team. Lau will work alongside Uday Ruddarraju and Mike Dalton (both from Elon Musk’s xAI), as well as Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta (META). Interestingly, Ruddarraju and Dalton helped build Colossus at xAI, which is a massive supercomputer that uses over 200,000 GPUs.
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It is worth noting that OpenAI’s scaling team is responsible for the hardware, software, and data centers that support the training of its AI models. That includes Stargate, which is a major new project focused on building AI infrastructure. Although this type of work isn’t as well-known as products like ChatGPT, it plays a key role in OpenAI’s mission to build powerful and safe AI. Unsurprisingly, the new hires said that they are excited to join the company, with Lau calling it the most meaningful work he could do, and Ruddarraju saying that Stargate is exactly the kind of challenge he enjoys.
This hiring spree comes as competition for AI talent heats up. Indeed, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively poaching talent by offering generous pay and resources, which has led OpenAI to consider increasing its compensation to stay competitive. As companies compete to develop “superintelligence,” they are being forced to spend significantly, change their hiring tactics, and explore new markets, such as education, where OpenAI and Microsoft plan to offer AI tools to teachers across the U.S.
Is MSFT Stock a Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 31 Buys and three Holds assigned in the last three months. Furthermore, the average MSFT price target of $527.37 per share implies 5% upside potential.
