New Delhi, July 10: OpenAI has hired engineers and researchers from rival companies. These new hires include key figures from Elon Musk-run X (formerly Twitter), xAI, and Tesla, signalling OpenAI in a move to stay ahead of the competitors in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. This strategic talent acquisition appears to be a response to growing competition from industry rivals.

As per a report of Wired, the company has recruited four engineers from competing firms. Among them is David Lau, who was the vice president of software engineering at Tesla and will now be part of OpenAI's scaling team. Joining him are Uday Ruddarraju, who previously led infrastructure engineering at xAI and X, Mike Dalton, an infrastructure engineer also from xAI, and Angela Fan, an AI researcher who worked at Meta.

Greg Brockman Welcomes Welcome David Lau, Mike Dalton, Uday Ruddarraju and Angela Fan

Greg Brockman Welcomes Spas Lazarov

Spas Lazarov Joins OpenAI

OpenAI's President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman announced several additions to the company’s physical infrastructure team in a post shared on July 10, 2025. “We’re also building out our physical infrastructure team — welcome to many amazing new team members!” he wrote. In a follow-up post, Brockman added, “Welcome David Lau, Mike Dalton, Uday Ruddarraju, and Angela Fan,” acknowledging the arrival of top talent from major tech rivals.

As per a report of DCD, joining the team is also Spas Lazarov, Apple’s former Director of Data Center Engineering. In a LinkedIn post, Lazarov esaid, “I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined OpenAI as a Member of Technical Staff, where I’ll be designing and building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure, pushing the boundaries of power, cooling, and compute to support the next generation of AI models and enable research at an unprecedented scale.”

The timing of these hiring is significant, as it coincides with Mark Zuckerberg-run Meta expanding its efforts to attract top AI professionals from rival firms, including from OpenAI. OpenAI is said to be looking to grow its infrastructure and achieve its aim of creating artificial general intelligence with the help of new employees.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 10, 2025 10:47 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).