OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is firing back at Meta’s AI hiring blitz.
The battle heats up after Meta announced a new superintelligence team led by Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman—snagging several top talent from OpenAI, including Shengjia Zhao and Jiahui Yu. OpenAI’s chief research officer Mark Chen reacted bluntly, saying it felt like “someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”
Altman’s response, sent via Slack to OpenAI researchers Monday, pushes the message: stay put. He downplayed Meta’s picks as far from top-tier, and warned of “deep cultural problems” with Meta’s approach. 
He also hinted OpenAI is reviewing compensation for all researchers to keep its talent.
Sam Altman stated:
“We have gone from some nerds in the corner to the most interesting people in the tech industry (at least),”
“AI Twitter is toxic; Meta is acting in a way that feels somewhat distasteful; I assume things will get even crazier in the future. After I got fired and came back I said that was not the craziest thing that would happen in OpenAI history; certainly neither is this.”
Altman criticized Meta’s long-running, wide-net recruitment, saying they failed to land OpenAI’s best minds.
“Meta has gotten a few great people for sure, but on the whole, it is hard to overstate how much they didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list; they have been trying to recruit people for a super long time, and I’ve lost track of how many people from here they’ve tried to get to be their Chief Scientist,”
“I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.”
He made a clear line between “missionaries” and “mercenaries.” His bet is on OpenAI’s mission-driven culture winning out.
“Missionaries will beat mercenaries,” Altman wrote.
“I believe there is much, much more upside to OpenAI stock than Meta stock,”
“But I think it’s important that huge upside comes after huge success; what Meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems. We will have more to share about this soon but it’s very important to me we do it fairly and not just for people who Meta happened to target.”
Altman doubled down on the research roadmap and culture at OpenAI.
“I have never been more confident in our research roadmap,” he said.
“We are making an unprecedented bet on compute, but I love that we are doing it and I’m confident we will make good use of it. Most importantly of all, I think we have the most special team and culture in the world. We have work to do to improve our culture for sure; we have been through insane hypergrowth. But we have the core right in a way that I don’t think anyone else quite does, and I’m confident we can fix the problems.”
He emphasized OpenAI’s mission-first approach to AGI, calling it distinct from Meta’s shifting priorities.
“And maybe more importantly than that, we actually care about building AGI in a good way,”
“Other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal to some other mission. But this is our top thing, and always will be. Long after Meta has moved on to their next flavor of the week, or defending their social moat, we will be here, day after day, year after year, figuring out how to do what we do better than anyone else. A lot of other efforts will rise and fall too.”
Inside OpenAI, employees echoed Altman’s pride in the company culture, noting it’s “quirky and weird” but that weirdness fuels innovation.
The war for AI talent is just ramping up. Meta’s poaching moves continue to rattle OpenAI, but Altman is confident his company will hold the line on culture and mission.
