OpenAI Poaches Google DeepMind Computer Vision Experts, Opens Zurich Office

Dec 4, 2024, 06:33 AM

OpenAI is intensifying its competition with Google by expanding its operations in Europe, notably by opening an office in Zurich, Switzerland. The company has recently poached three prominent computer vision researchers from Google DeepMind, signaling a strategic move to bolster its AI capabilities. These researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, were instrumental in developing state-of-the-art vision approaches and open-source models like ViT, SigLIP, and PaliGemma. Their move to OpenAI is part of a broader talent acquisition strategy, as the company also plans to launch its first AI agent, 'Operator,' in January. Additionally, there is anticipation around the potential release of new AI models, including Sora, a text-to-video model, Sora Turbo, Grok3, and an open-source reasoning model, along with updates to existing models like GPT-4o.