OpenAI has announced the appointment of Albert Lee, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Google, as its Vice President of Corporate Development.
An OpenAI spokesperson told Reuters that the goal of bringing on Lee was “to ensure we have a senior leader with broad visibility across the company who is empowered to move quickly”.
At Google, Lee led the corporate development for Google Cloud and DeepMind, and the strategy and scouting team.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked on Google’s US$5.4 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm Mandiant and its US$2.6 billion purchase of data analytics provider Looker.
Lee will start at OpenAI in January and will report to Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar.
This follows an ongoing poaching war between the big players in AI.
Meta has been especially guilty of this, even offering US$100 million signing bonuses to those who join them.
Meta has poached talent from Alphabet’s Google, Apple and Anthropic.
