Meta Tried to Lure OpenAI Engineers With $100M Offers, Says Altman
Meta’s $100M recruitment push highlights fierce rivalry with OpenAI — but Altman says no key engineers jumped ship.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta offered its engineers signing bonuses of $100 million to join the company's AI division. Altman shared these details during an interview on his brother's “Uncapped” podcast on Tuesday.
In addition to a massive one-time cash bonus, the owner of Facebook also offered an annual compensation package that exceeded that amount. The offer was aimed at top engineers who were being encouraged to leave the team responsible for ChatGPT. Altman believes Meta views OpenAI as its “biggest competitor” in the AI race.
He contrasted Meta's compensation-focused approach with OpenAI's culture centered on developing artificial general intelligence. Companies are trying to court top AI researchers with multimillion-dollar packages as competition for talent intensifies. Altman said none of OpenAI's key staff accepted Meta's offers so far:
I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.
Meta's recruitment efforts come after the company invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling firm Scale AI, lifting its valuation to $29 billion, and hired Scale's CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a new “superintelligence” unit. The company is working to catch up with competitors by building a top research team.
According to Bloomberg, one notable addition is Jack Rae, a senior researcher formerly with Google’s DeepMind. The report also noted that Mark Zuckerberg has taken a direct role in the recruitment push, personally reaching out to top AI experts.
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Nevertheless, Meta experienced departures from its own AI teams in recent months and delayed releases of its flagship open-source models. These setbacks increased the company's urgency to hire experts who can advance its machine-learning projects.
The recruitment battle highlights the intense competition between major tech companies as they race to develop advanced AI capabilities and secure the limited pool of top-tier talent in the field.
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