"Zuckerberg, Chen said, has personally "hand-cooked" and "hand-delivered" soup to researchers he wanted to recruit away from OpenAI. And it wasn't a joke, the executive insisted. "It was shocking to me at the time," Chen admitted. But in Silicon Valley, if the enemy brings broth, you must respond in kind. Chen confessed he has now adopted the tactic, delivering soup to his own recruits as he hopes to poach talent from Meta."
"However, he draws the line at manual labor. "No, no, no ... it's better if you get like Michelin-star soup," Chen laughed, noting he outsources the job to a high-end Korean-soup spot in the Valley called Daeho. "These things can be effective in their own way," he said. Chen is even planning a cooking class offsite to lean into the absurdity."
"The cozy theatrics disguise a harsher reality: the pool of people who can design and train cutting-edge large language models is microscopic. Industry insiders estimate there are fewer than 1,000 researchers globally with the expertise to push the frontier on their own."
Meta and OpenAI are engaged in an escalating recruitment war for top AI researchers. Meta pursued half of Mark Chen's direct reports and Mark Zuckerberg personally hand-cooked and hand-delivered soup to targeted researchers. Mark Chen adopted the tactic, outsourcing Michelin-quality Korean soup to attract talent while avoiding manual labor. The competition combines theatrical perks with massive financial offers, special compute access, liquidity events, and promises of influence. The pool of researchers who can design and train cutting-edge large language models is extremely small, with fewer than 1,000 people worldwide.
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