Meta is throwing massive cash at AI talent, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally offering some researchers $10 million a year to build superintelligent AI.
One AI expert told us Zuckerberg emailed them directly, saying, "I have an offer for you." The exact job details are unclear, but the salary is jaw-dropping.
The company is targeting a shortlist of 50 to 100 elite AI researchers. This move comes amid fierce competition for GenAI talent, with Meta reportedly losing professionals to OpenAI, Anthropic, and others despite seven-figure paydays. 
Deedy Das, principal at Menlo Ventures, tweeted about Meta’s $2M+ yearly offers still losing talent. SignalFire data shows Meta lost 4.3% of its AI staff in 2024, second only to Google.
Former Twitter AI lead Yudian Zheng turned down a $1 million Meta offer to start his own AI company, saying, "Competition for top GenAI talent has become extremely intense."
Meta aims to catch up to OpenAI and Anthropic by doubling down on foundation models, data quality, and recruiting top minds. The company recently invested $15 billion in Scale AI and put the startup’s CEO Alexandr Wang in charge of a new AI division.
The move follows the underwhelming launch of Meta’s Llama 4 model, though plans for the new AI group started months earlier.
When asked about superintelligence, a source told us:
"It’s already the case that in so many dimensions, these models are superhuman, right?
For example, they can defeat humans at math or Go or whatever. So it’s not so crazy to me. There are always holes [in what they can do] but these holes keep disappearing as we scale and we improve the algorithms.
The more interesting thing to me is it feels like there’s an inflection point where these models have become useful and have business value. And we’ve crossed that line and it’s just going to flow from there. I think that’s what’s going on here."
Meta expects its GenAI products to generate up to $1.4 trillion in revenue by 2035. The company can afford paying half a billion in salaries amid a $60-$65 billion capital expenditure plan for 2025.
The AI wars have never looked more intense—and Meta is ready to pay top dollar to stay in the fight.
