OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, has snatched up dozens of former Google and Meta employees in its efforts to create an AI chatbot.
Data from LeadGenius and Punks & Pinstripes shows that a number of the company's 200-plus employees came from Alphabet, the parent company of Google and AI research lab DeepMind. OpenAI currently employs about 59 ex-Google employees and about 34 former Meta staff, according to the data.
The company also employs several former Apple and Amazon workers, the data shows.
Greg Larkin, CEO of Punks & Pinstripes, a network of Fortune 500 executives, told Insider that the data should serve as a "wakeup call" for big tech companies.
"If nothing else, OpenAI is a sign that Big Tech, especially Google, isn't optimizing its investments in its employees," Larkin said. "A lot of AI talent has been working on secondary products in innovation labs like Alphabet X. For many this means that they rarely see their work have a meaningful impact on the company's core products or earnings."
OpenAI's leadership team is predominantly made up of former Big Tech workers, including several ex-Google, Meta, and Apple employees — all companies with competing AI departments. The company also recently hired Tesla's former head of Autopilot Andrej Karpathy.
Rick Kreifeldt, a Punks & Pinstripes member and CTO of Sorenson Communications, told Insider that OpenAI is a prime example of how startups are evolving.
"The team is largely composed of people who spent a lot of time in large tech companies who have now left," he said. "This is a stark difference from when Mark Zuckerberg was building Facebook from his Harvard dorm room."
OpenAI was originally founded in 2015 as a nonprofit. Several of tech's industry leaders, including former LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, pledged $1 billion to the initiative that was designed to develop artificial intelligence "in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole."
The Information previously reported that OpenAI hired several Google employees to do "instrumental" work on ChatGPT in the months leading up to its November launch. Since then, ChatGPT has garnered millions of users for its ability to do anything from write essays to code.
More recently, several engineers have taken to Twitter to announce that they are leaving Google for OpenAI.
"Excited to share that I joined @OpenAI after 3 incredible years at Google Brain!" AI research engineer Hyung Won Chung tweeted last week. "Can't wait to work on #ChatGPT and help drive the future of AI."
Another ex-Google Brain engineer said last week on Twitter that he "can't wait to see the impact of AI on society" after leaving Google in favor of OpenAI. Google Brain is an AI research team at the tech giant.
Google and OpenAI, which is partnered with Microsoft, are currently locked in an AI war. Earlier this month, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman took a subtle dig at Google, which he called a "lethargic search monopoly." Microsoft has already incorporated OpenAI's technology into its "new Bing" search engine, which could challenge the dominance of Google. Meanwhile, Google is racing to release its own AI competitor, Bard.
Do you work for OpenAI or Google? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work email at gkay@insider.com
