September 6: Shawn Shen, Memories.ai co-founder and CEO of the AI startup, said that repeated reorganizations at Meta are forcing AI researchers to seek opportunities in startups as well as smaller companies. Shen himself quit Meta last year and has already recruited several former scientists from Meta, and is providing compensation packages of as much as $2 million to lure the best talent.
The repeated changes of managers and objectives at Meta make the researchers frustrated and hamper long-term progress, Shen says. "Meta is always reorganizing. Your manager and your objectives can change every few months. For some researchers, it can be very frustrating and feel like time wasted," Shen said in an interview, stating that startups allow the freedom to do ambitious projects.
Shen cited the popular line of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, "the biggest risk is not taking any risks," believing that numerous researchers are now opting to make their moves by going to startups. He underscored that his firm has already recruited Eddy Wu, ex-manager of Meta's generative AI team, as Chief AI Officer, as well as Meta Superintelligence Labs' talent, and even Google DeepMind.
The company is working to create AI that is able to read and recall video information, a specialized sector with broad applicability. Shen explained that AI researchers now earn big paychecks because they are at the cutting edge of tech. "It's really in the tens of millions range for some of the top researchers. But it indicates how precious AI talent is in determining the future," he stated.
In contrast to larger tech companies, Memories.ai is also going to launch more equity-based plans, making new joiners more like founding members than employees. Shen is convinced that this will tighten the company's growth and future fundraising options.
In the next six months, Memories.ai will add three to five more employees, and five to ten in the course of a year, as it makes its aggressive bid to become a leader in the world of AI.
