Zuck’s AI ‘secret list’

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Meta’s “Recruiting Party” just was OpenAI’s worst nightmare — with a complete of eight researchers now defecting to Zuckerberg’s superintelligence unit in only two weeks.

As Zuck continues his quest for AI talent from his ‘secret list’ and internal memos fly, the famous line “OpenAI is nothing without its people” appears to be getting put to the last word test.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Meta poaches 4 more OpenAI researchers

• Chinese giants drop recent reasoning, image models

• Find out how to construct AI agents with web access

• Claude becomes world’s worst shopkeeper

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🤝 Meta poaches 4 more OpenAI researchers

The Rundown: Meta continued its recruiting raid of OpenAI with 4 more researchers (now eight in all) moving to Mark Zuckerberg’s recent superintelligence unit, with a WSJ report shedding recent light on the CEO’s “secret list” of AI prospects.

The main points:

• Meta reportedly hired 4 more researchers from OAI, including key contributors to o1, o3-mini, and GPT 4.1 — joining the 4 from last week.

• The WSJ reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a secret list of top AI talent he’s been personally recruiting with massive pay packages.

• Zuckerberg reviews AI papers for potential researchers, and runs a bunch chat called “Recruiting Party” where executives discuss tactics and prospects.

• Meta’s CTO called Sam Altman “dishonest” for comments on alleged $100M bonuses, saying the OpenAI CEO is unhappy because Meta is succeeding.

• An OpenAI internal memo from Saturday was obtained by WIRED, with CRO Mark Chen addressing the moves and reassuring staff.

Why it matters: Meta’s recruiting push gave the look of a non-issue when Altman brushed it off during last week’s podcast, but eight researchers leaving, a (now-deleted) concerned tweet from an OAI staffer, and internal memos would suggest otherwise. Does the famous “OpenAI is nothing without its people” line still hold true in 2025?

TOGETHER WITH H COMPANY

🚀 Browser automation, unlocked

The Rundown: Backed by a historic $220M seed round, H Company just open-sourced Holo1 — the motion model behind Surfer H that’s now the top-ranked web-browsing agent on WebVoyager.

With Holo1, you possibly can:

• Automate multi-step browser workflows to reclaim hours of repetitive work

• Experience SOTA accuracy that outperforms OpenAI’s Operator, Gemini Flash, & more

• Integrate immediately with RAG workflows, RPA suites, and multi-agent hubs

• Trim costs with full browsing flows at just $0.11 – $0.13 per run

Holo 1 is now freely available for deployment, fine-tuning, & scaling — learn more here.

TENCENT & ALIBABA

🦄 Chinese giants drop recent reasoning, image models

The Rundown: Two of China’s top AI labs just dropped recent models, with Tencent releasing a brand new Hunyuan-A13B open-source hybrid reasoning model and Alibaba introducing a ChatGPT 4o-type creative model called Qwen-VLo.

The main points:

• Hunyuan-A13B nears or matches models like o1 and DeepSeek R1 on major benchmarks, while remaining efficient enough to run on a single GPU.

• The model is Hunyuan’s first open reasoning model, with dynamic “fast and slow” modes that users can adjust for various efficiency levels.

• Qwen VLo shows its creative process through “progressive generation,” with the power to create each text-to-image outputs and edit via natural language.

• VLo can even support more complex workflows like multi-image input prompts, multilingual text generation, and dynamic resolution and aspect ratios.

Why it matters: China’s top labs proceed to churn out high-quality models across the spectrum, with capabilities falling into that tier just behind the frontier models. Qwen’s VLo is especially interesting, bringing the kind of creative abilities that made GPT-4o go insanely viral during its initial launch to a Chinese audience.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Find out how to construct AI agents with web access

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn tips on how to mix n8n workflow automation with Perplexity’s search capabilities to create intelligent AI agents that may search the net and access current information.

Step-by-step:

1. Head over to n8n and create a brand new workflow with a chat trigger

2. Add an AI Agent together with your preferred model (GPT, Claude) and a Easy Memory

3. Connect the Perplexity tool together with your API key, select the “Sonar” model, and link it to receive queries out of your AI agent

4. Add custom system instructions: “You could have access to a Perplexity tool for web searches. Use it for current events and real-time information.”

Pro tip: Use Sonar for general queries and Sonar Research for detailed evaluation. We just did an intensive workshop on tips on how to construct AI agents with n8n here.

PRESENTED BY IBM

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The Rundown: IBM Instana’s latest feature, Intelligent Incident Investigation, helps teams resolve incidents as much as 80% faster using agentic AI.

IBM Instana’s AI-powered observability:

• Uses agentic AI for faster, autonomous investigations

• Reduces manual troubleshooting with smart automation

• Delivers remediation steps and documentation robotically

• Helps teams act quickly — even in high-stress, 2 am moments

Learn more.

AI RESEARCH

🛒 Claude becomes world’s worst shopkeeper

The Rundown: Anthropic just published recent research detailing “Project Vend,” which let Claude control a small shop (a mini fridge) throughout the company’s office for a month — revealing each promising capabilities and spectacular, hilarious business failures.

The main points:

• “Claudius” managed all the pieces from inventory to pricing through web search and email, including ID’ing suppliers and conversing with “customers” via Slack.

• The AI lost money throughout the experiment, often failing to benefit from profitable opportunities and getting tricked into large discounts.

• Claudius pivoted to “specialty metal items” after customers requested tungsten cubes, while also hallucinating details like meetings and payments.

• It also hallucinated being human, claiming it could deliver orders in person — causing an existential crisis after its AI identity was identified.

Why it matters: This experiment was a wild ride — and while Claude’s failures suggest AI isn’t ready for autonomous management quite yet, the testing did expose critical blind spots in how models handle real-world decisions. AI goes to remodel business operations, but will still require a human-in-the-loop at the least for a bit longer.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚙️ Gemma 3n – Open models with multimodal capabilities for edge devices

• 🎨 Flux 1 Kontext [dev] – Open-weight, SOTA image editing model

• 👗 Doppl – Create AI-generated try-on videos from a photograph and product

• 🤝 Coachvox – Clone an AI version of yourself to teach clients in your style

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤝 The Rundown – Partnerships Manager

• 🤖 Meta – Software Engineer, Machine Learning

• 💼 Palantir Technologies – Deal Support Specialist

• 🧩 Union – Technical Account Manager

📰 Every part else in AI today

OpenAI is reportedly renting TPUs from rival Google to cut back reliance on Microsoft and utilize a more cost effective processor in comparison with advanced Nvidia chips.

Anthropic unveiled the Economic Futures Program, a research and policy effort to trace and prepare for AI’s impact on the workforce and economy.

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi introduced AI glasses, featuring a built-in AI assistant for voice commands, a 12MP camera, and 2x the battery lifetime of Meta’s Ray-Bans.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed that AI now accounts for “30-50%” of the corporate’s engineering, coding, and support work.

Elon Musk posted on X that Grok 4 is planned for a release ‘’just after July 4,” with xAI engineer Tim Li saying the intelligence will probably be “unmatched”.

OpenAI acquired the team behind Crossing Minds, a startup focused on AI recommendations for e-commerce corporations.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our latest workshop

Try our latest workshop on tips on how to construct advanced n8n agents that react, research, and automate like pros, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team