Meta lured with $100 million signing bonus to poach OpenAI employees, says Sam Altman

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said that Meta (NASDAQ:META) made offers of up to $100 million in signing bonuses to OpenAI employees to tap their top AI talent. Altman confirmed this on a podcast hosted by his brother, Jack Altman, and claimed that Meta’s efforts haven’t really worked.

“They started making these like giant offers to, you know, a lot of people on our team, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year,” Altman said. “I’m really happy that at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.” He also took the opportunity to fire a few more shots at Meta.

“I think that people sort of look at the two paths and say, all right, OpenAI has got a really good shot, a much better shot at actually delivering on super intelligence, and also may eventually be the more valuable company,” he further explained.

Altman noted that, so far, none of OpenAI’s “best people” have chosen to accept Meta’s offers, criticizing the tech giant’s approach to hiring. “I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp, and that being the reason you tell someone to join… I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture.”

Meta’s efforts included not only Microsoft-backed (NASDAQ:MSFT) OpenAI employees but also top researchers from Google (GOOG) DeepMind, and the company has recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought on its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team.