Mark Chen Said No to Zuckerberg’s Billions
By James Moreau | 29 Jul, 2025

The AI luminary behind ChatGPT and DALL-E rebuffed a colossal offer from Meta amid a frantic AI talent war.

Mark Chen led OpenAI’s researchers in their pioneering AI successes but the only splash he made was by turning down Mark Zuckerberg’s offer, reportedly valued at upwards of $1 billion, to lead Meta’s belated AI push.  

As OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Chen described the “visceral feeling” he felt in mid-July as like having been burglarized after Zuckerberg had successfully poached 8 of his AI team since late June.  Instead of joining the exodus Chen worked “around the clock” alongside CEO Sam Altman to stop more defections by AI researchers.

Chen’s research since joining OpenAI in 2018 has been instrumental in shaping the modern AI landscape highlighted by ChatGPT’s explosive growth to over 100 million users within two months of its December 2022 free preview.

The transformative text-to-image model DALL-E which revolutionized generative AI was created by Chen’s teams in 2021.  He also spearheaded the integration of visual perception into GPT-4.

Completed in just 7 weeks Chen’s ingenuity led to Codex, a sophisticated code generation model prompted by natural language.

Such contributions have led the company’s valuation to go from under $1 billion to $300 billion during Chen’s tenure.

Prior to joining OpenAI Chen developed machine learning algorithms for trading firms, including Integral Technology LLC where he was a partner, and Tech Square Trading. Chen’s childhood was split between New Jersey and California before he completed high school in Taiwan.  He returned to the U.S. to earn a bachelor’s degree in math and computer science from MIT in 2012.  Chen is currently a coach for the USA Computing Olympiad team.