OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disclosed that Meta offered $100 million bonuses to recruit his employees, a move highlighting the tech giant’s aggressive artificial intelligence strategy. These alleged recruitment attempts underscore the intense drive to secure top AI engineers as the Facebook owner works to establish its superintelligence unit and gain ground on rivals.
The battle for AI talent is at a fever pitch; companies now court star researchers like professional athletes, believing individual contributions can determine success or failure. “They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman stated on his brother’s Uncapped podcast, which aired Tuesday. He added, “You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year.” Altman affirmed, “At least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours; Reuters could not verify the information. “I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman remarked.
Altman’s comments follow Meta’s recent $14.3 billion investment in data-labeling startup Scale AI and its hiring of Scale AI’s top boss, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team. While Meta once led in open-source AI models, it has recently experienced staff departures and delayed new open-source AI model launches that could compete with rivals like Google, China’s DeepSeek, and OpenAI.
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News Source: Finance.yahoo.com
