Meta is on a hiring blitz to build a superintelligence AI lab. The company is throwing compensation packages worth over $100 million at top AI talent from OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
The team will be led by Alexandr Wang, ex-Scale AI CEO, working physically close to Mark Zuckerberg. Meta also invested heavily in Wang’s former company, Scale AI.
But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says these massive offers aren’t landing. On a recent podcast, he confirmed Meta’s poaching efforts have largely failed. 
Altman added the big payouts won’t build a strong culture. He believes OpenAI’s focus on mission beats Meta’s high-compensation approach.
“[Meta has] started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Sam Altman said on the podcast.
“You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year […]
I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that.”
Meta tried to recruit OpenAI lead researcher Noam Brown and Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu but struck out. Altman praised OpenAI’s culture of innovation and said Meta’s AI efforts haven’t met expectations.
“I respect many things about Meta but I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” Altman said.
“It’s not enough to catch up on AI — you have to truly innovate to stay ahead.”
Meta has snagged stars like DeepMind’s Jack Rae and Sesame AI’s Johan Schalkwyk, but the AI race heats up. OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind are running full speed. OpenAI plans to release an open AI model soon, potentially widening its lead.
Altman teased an AI-powered social media feed that could challenge Meta’s apps, sharing his curiosity about an AI-driven custom feed app. OpenAI is quietly working on a social network, while Meta experiments with its Meta AI app, though user reactions have been mixed.
Zuckerberg and Altman are now clearly head-to-head in the fight for AI talent and supremacy. The next year will be critical for Meta’s AI ambitions.
