Meta went big to poach OpenAI talent, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million and even bigger annual packages, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed.
Altman said Meta has tried to hire “a lot of people” from OpenAI but none of OpenAI’s top staff have accepted.
Altman made the comments on the Uncapped podcast, hosted by his brother. 
Meta Platforms CEO Sam Altman stated:
"I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor."
"Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things."
"I think that there’s a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying ‘we’re just going to try to copy OpenAI.’"
"That basically never works. You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate."
"Meta’s strategy of offering a large, upfront, guaranteed compensation would detract from the actual work and not set up a winning culture."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a top AI team for its “superintelligence” lab. The company recently bought a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion, bringing founder Alexandr Wang onboard with some Scale employees.
John Rae, a top DeepMind researcher, also jumped to Meta. Bloomberg reports Zuckerberg is personally involved in hunting AI talent.
The moves come as Meta delayed its flagship AI model release amid concerns over performance, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Meta’s AI division manages the Llama open-source large language models. Some analysts push back on claims Meta is falling behind. Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, told CNBC Meta “basically built the rails for open source AI development” and that Meta’s scale investments like Scale AI will keep it competitive.
OpenAI, meanwhile, just snapped up former Apple design chief Jony Ive’s AI startup io for $6.4 billion in equity.
Meta has thrown massive cash at AI talent and startups to close the gap. Altman says copying OpenAI’s approach won’t cut it. The AI war is far from over.
