Sam Altman says Meta offered $100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta has been offering massive bonuses of $100 million to his employees in an attempt to recruit them. This move by the tech giant is part of its efforts to strengthen its artificial intelligence strategy.
Meta's alleged pursuits to hire staff from OpenAI highlight the intense competition in the tech industry to acquire top engineering talent for AI model development. The competition comes as Meta, the parent company of Facebook, aims to enhance its superintelligence unit to keep up with its rivals.
Intense Competition for AI Talent
The race to secure AI talent has become increasingly fierce, with leading researchers being aggressively pursued, akin to how professional athletes are sought after. Altman shared on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother that Meta has been making substantial offers to many members of the OpenAI team.
Altman stated, "They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year." Despite these tempting offers, Altman noted that none of OpenAI's top talents have accepted them so far.
Meta has yet to comment on these claims, and the information remains unverified at this time. Altman also mentioned that he had heard Meta considers OpenAI as its primary competitor.
Meta's Recent Strategic Moves
Altman's comments come shortly after Meta's significant investment of $14.3 billion in the data-labeling startup Scale AI. Additionally, Meta appointed Alexandr Wang, the former head of Scale AI, to lead its newly established superintelligence team.
Once renowned for its open-source AI models, Meta has experienced setbacks due to employee departures and delays in launching new open-source AI models that could compete with industry players like Google, China's DeepSeek, and OpenAI.
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