OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother Jack Altman, revealed that Meta made aggressive attempts to poach top OpenAI talent, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million and massive compensation packages.
Meta “started making these like giant offers to uh you know a lot of people on our team um you know like $100 million signing bonuses more than that comp per year,” Altman told his brother.
Sam continued, “It is crazy. I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
“I think that people sort of look at the two paths and say all right OpenAI’s got a really good shot – and much better shot at actually delivering on super intelligence – and may eventually be the more valuable company. But I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focusing on that and not the work and not the mission. I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture,” the chatbot CEO pointed out.
Meta’s aggressive push to lure top OpenAI talent comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spearheaded the social media company’s push into “superintelligence” AI by acquiring a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion. Scale AI’s founder, Alexandr Wang, will lead a new research lab under Meta.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Meta poached Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, to join Zuckerberg’s superintelligence AI quest.
All of this underscores one key reality: there are only a handful of individuals on the planet capable of executing large-scale AI training. As a result, Big Tech is offering staggering upfront compensation deals to secure this rare talent—fueling an intensifying poaching war across Silicon Valley, with AI set to dominate the talent battlefield for years to come.
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