Ex‑Meta Hires Spark OpenAI Culture Debate

New reporting summarized by The Rundown (drawing on The Information) says OpenAI is seeing a sizable cultural shift as people from Meta join the company. Roughly one in five OpenAI employees — over 600 of ~3,000 staffers — are ex‑Meta, including senior figures such as applications CEO Fidji Simo. The influx has prompted internal chatter (even a Slack channel) and survey questions about whether OpenAI is becoming “too much like Meta.”

The report highlights tensions: former CTO Mira Murati reportedly departed over disagreements about user‑growth direction; some teams are exploring ad‑adjacent uses like leveraging ChatGPT’s memory for personalized advertising, despite CEO Sam Altman previously calling that idea “dystopian.” Employees have also voiced skepticism about Sora 2’s rollout and moderation challenges. Taken together, the story frames a classic scale‑up dilemma: adopting growth‑oriented talent and tactics can accelerate consumer product expansion, but may change the research‑driven culture that defined OpenAI’s early identity.

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