The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has accused Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta of offering as high as $100 million in signing bonuses in its aggressive bid to poach AI talent from the ChatGPT maker.
Altman made the disclosure during an episode of Uncapped, a podcast hosted by his brother, where he described the compensation packages Meta is offering as “crazy.”
“They’ve tried to hire a lot of people at OpenAI. “So far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly taking a hands-on role in building the company’s new “superintelligence” team, personally recruiting top AI researchers from across the industry.
“I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things. But I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” he said.
He added that cultural factors play a key role in retaining talent, arguing that chasing high compensation could ultimately detract from meaningful work.
“I think we understand a lot of things they don’t,” he said.
Meta has not responded to requests for comment at the time of this report.
Meta, once recognized as a leader in open-source AI models, has suffered from staff departures and has postponed the launches of new open-source AI models that could rival competitors like Google, China’s DeepSeek, and OpenAI.
As part of its aggressive push for dominance, Meta recently invested in Scale AI in a deal that values the data-labeling startup at $29 billion and brings in its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang, to play a prominent role in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence strategy.