Sam Altman says Meta is offering OpenAI staff $100 million to poach AI talent

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta of offering as high as $100 million in signing bonuses in its aggressive bid to poach AI talent from the ChatGPT maker.

Altman made the disclosure during an episode of Uncapped, a podcast hosted by his brother, where he described the compensation packages Meta is offering as “crazy.” 

“They’ve tried to hire a lot of people at OpenAI. “So far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said.

Mark Zuckerberg’s superintelligence team 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly taking a hands-on role in building the company’s new “superintelligence” team, personally recruiting top AI researchers from across the industry.

• In a major show of intent, Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, and brought on Scale’s CEO Alexandr Wang to join its AI efforts.
• The company has also lured talent from other top AI labs. According to Bloomberg, Meta recently poached Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind.
• While acknowledging Meta’s aggressive strategy, Altman suggested that OpenAI’s talent is not easily swayed by massive paydays.

“I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things. But I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” he said.

He added that cultural factors play a key role in retaining talent, arguing that chasing high compensation could ultimately detract from meaningful work.

“I think we understand a lot of things they don’t,” he said.

Meta has not responded to requests for comment at the time of this report.