Prominent Korean AI researcher departs OpenAI to join Meta

Hyung Won Chung via X — Hyung Won Chung/ Captured from X

SEOUL, July 18 (AJP) - Hyung Won Chung, a prominent researcher at OpenAI and the only Korean contributor to its cutting-edge o1 model, has joined Meta’s newly formed Superintelligence Lab.

Chung will move to Meta alongside Jason Wei, another former OpenAI researcher with whom he collaborated on both the o1 model and OpenAI’s Deep Research initiative.

Chung, who earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019, previously spent four years at Google Brain, where he focused on large language models and reasoning systems.

He joined OpenAI in early 2023 and quickly became a key contributor to some of its most ambitious projects. Among the 20 researchers involved in developing the o1 model, he was the only Korean participant.

Chung and Wei had previously worked together at Google before moving to OpenAI. Their joint arrival at Meta suggests they were recruited as a package, a practice that has become increasingly common as firms seek to reduce onboarding friction and accelerate research output.

The hires come amid a broader talent offensive led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has made public his ambition to compete directly with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic in the race to develop artificial general intelligence.

Lim Jaeho ajupresswogh@ajunews.com