The Whale Samurai, poached by Meta for a hefty sum, embarked on a new venture immediately after the Muse Suite was delivered

According to DynoMight Beating monitoring, Jiahui Yu has announced his departure from Meta and plans to start a new company. He joined Meta last year from OpenAI and co-founded the TBD Lab with Mark Zuckerberg and Tony Wang, focusing on multi-modal research. Over a year later, he has chosen to leave the tech giant to start his own venture.

During his time at Meta, Jiahui Yu was involved in projects such as Muse Spark, Voice Mode, Muse Image, and Muse Video. Just before his departure, Muse Spark had been updated to version 1.2. He mentioned that he is increasingly drawn to a "problem that is very important for the future of humanity but is currently under-explored," and he will dedicate all his efforts to exploring it. The name and specific direction of his new company have not been disclosed yet.

Prior to this, Jiahui Yu led the Perception Team at OpenAI and was involved in Google DeepMind's Gemini multi-modal research. When Meta established the Super Intelligence Lab last year, he was one of the core researchers recruited by Zuckerberg from OpenAI.

When Jiahui Yu joined Meta, it was during a highly competitive phase for AI talent in Silicon Valley. Meta was reportedly offering a total compensation of over $100 million for the first year to a select few top talents, although the company later denied that all core employees received this level of compensation. There is currently no evidence to suggest that Jiahui Yu himself received a $100 million annual salary.