Sam Altman accuses Meta of offering $100m to poach OpenAI talent

In a surprising twist, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has claimed that Meta is aggressively attempting to recruit his company’s top AI researchers with massive compensation packages, reportedly worth over $100 million.

The revelation came during a podcast conversation with his brother, Jack Altman.

Altman noted that the Mark Zuckerberg-led AI tech giant has made significant efforts to build a superintelligence team by hiring from rival AI labs, including OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

The team is reportedly being led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and the offers include perks like proximity to Zuckerberg’s office and sky-high salaries.

“Meta has started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said.

“You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, or more than that in annual compensation. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that,” he stated.

According to Altman, his employees have stayed because they believe in OpenAI’s mission and its stronger prospects of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

He added that focusing solely on high salaries rather than purpose or culture could be counterproductive for companies like Meta.

Altman further claimed that Meta tried and failed to recruit top names like OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu.