OpenAI Talent Moves to China as Tencent Offers $19.5 Million Package

29-Year-Old AI Researcher Moves for Unprecedented Compensation
War for AI Talent Intensifies Among Global Big Tech Giants

Chinese IT giant Tencent is reportedly offering an extraordinary package worth as much as 100 million yuan, approximately 19.5 billion Korean won, to recruit young talent from OpenAI. This starkly illustrates the fierce global competition among AI companies to secure top talent.

Chinese IT giant Tencent reportedly offered a staggering 100 million yuan, approximately 19.5 billion Korean won, in an extraordinary deal to recruit young talent from OpenAI. Photo by Reuters and Yonhap News

According to Bloomberg News on September 12 (local time), citing multiple sources, Yao Shunyu (29), a core researcher at OpenAI, recently moved to Tencent. He is expected to lead projects at Tencent that will integrate AI capabilities across the company's entire range of services.

Researcher Yao completed his undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University in China and earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University in the United States at one of the youngest ages on record. After an internship at Google, he joined OpenAI in June 2023, where he conducted research related to AI agents.

Tencent, a leading IT conglomerate in China, has been expanding its presence in various sectors including the popular messenger WeChat, cloud computing, gaming, and fintech. The company has recently accelerated its efforts to secure technical talent in order to deeply integrate AI technology into its services.

Yao's move is drawing particular attention as global big tech companies such as Meta, Google, and Apple are offering astronomical compensation packages to attract AI experts. One source indicated that Tencent may have offered Yao a package worth up to 100 million yuan (approximately 19.5 billion Korean won). There are also reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally attempted to recruit Yao. However, the exact terms of the contract have not been officially confirmed.

Previously, Meta had aggressively recruited talent from competitors with high salaries to strengthen its superintelligence research lab.

Bloomberg described Yao's move as "one of the most notable talent shifts from the US-centric AI ecosystem to China," analyzing that the international race for AI technological supremacy is intensifying into a war for talent acquisition.