Google: OpenAI hires Google’s Richard Ho to head new hardware department

OpenAI has hired Google’s Richard Ho as the head of hardware to lead the new division to help “influence roadmaps for hardware partners for data center networks, racks, and buildings.”

Ho had spent about 9 years at Google, leading one of the company’s Cloud Tensor Processing Units projects, with his last role being the senior director of engineering. After that the led the chip engineering division at photonic computing company Lightmatter. While working at Google, he co-invented a method for using machine learning to design chip architectures. He wrote on LinkedIn, "I aim to build teams that efficiently build novel chips attacking the hardest problems with creativity and flair.”

OpenAI is currently hiring for a deep learning hardware/software co-design engineer who will likely work in Ho’s team. The unreported listing states, "We’re forming a new team to work with our partners on hardware optimization and co-design, and are looking for a founding engineer. This team will be responsible for working with partners to optimize their hardware for our workloads, identifying promising new deep learning accelerators, and bringing those hardware platforms to production.”