Three key players in OpenAI’s massive effort to set up hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of artificial intelligence data center capacity are joining Meta Platforms, according to people familiar with the matter.
Peter Hoeschele, who played a critical role in OpenAI’s Stargate initiative, is one of the new hires, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move isn’t yet public. He’ll be joined by Shamez Hemani, who worked on computing strategy and business development, and Anuj Saharan, another leader in the computing organisation. The Information reported Thursday that the three had left OpenAI.
A spokesperson for Menlo Park, California-based Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment. Hoeschele, Hemani and Saharan also declined to comment.
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously said that the company was grateful for the contributions of the three employees and remains focused on hiring talent for its infrastructure plans. The company hired former Intel executive Sachin Katti in November to lead its industrial compute efforts.
Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend aggressively to amass the data centers, computing power and talent needed to compete in a fast-moving AI race. This year alone, Meta projected as much as $135 billion in capital expenditures, with a focus on AI infrastructure projects. Before the end of the decade, Zuckerberg has promised to spend hundreds of billions more on AI infrastructure projects.
The computing power will support the Meta Superintelligence Labs, a team created by Zuckerberg to keep up with rivals in AI. Meta just released a new model, Muse Spark, created by the group.
Stargate, meanwhile, was announced last year at the White House as a $500 billion venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank Group. The project has more recently morphed into a catchall brand for all of OpenAI’s data center plans.
OpenAI has said it’s ahead of AI competitors in expanding its computing infrastructure to support the company’s models. That included projects like a site in Abilene, Texas, that Hoeschele and his team led the work on. The San Francisco-based company recently cited its early start in securing computing power as an advantage over competitor Anthropic PBC in a recent memo to investors.
Still, the Stargate push has undergone a number of changes since it began. OpenAI said Thursday that it’s pausing its Stargate artificial intelligence infrastructure project in the UK as it reins in ambitious spending plans ahead of a highly anticipated public listing. The company, along with Oracle, also decided not to lease an expansion to the site in Abilene.