Meta is making headlines with its aggressive push to attract top artificial intelligence experts, reportedly offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million to OpenAI staff. The claim was made by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who spoke candidly about the tech giant’s recruitment tactics during a recent episode of the “Uncapped” podcast, hosted by his brother.
Altman described Meta’s offers as “crazy,” emphasizing that while Meta has tried to hire many OpenAI employees, none of the company’s best talent have accepted the lucrative deals so far. “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.
The move comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes a hands-on approach to building a new “superintelligence” team. In a major show of intent, Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, bringing on its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to help lead its AI efforts. The company has also recruited talent from other leading AI labs, including Google DeepMind.
Despite Meta’s aggressive strategy, Altman believes OpenAI’s culture and mission keep its staff loyal. “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, adding that meaningful work and a strong workplace culture are more important than large paychecks.
Meta has not responded to requests for comments.
Industry observers note that Meta’s push comes at a time when the company has faced staff departures and delays in launching new open-source AI models, as it seeks to compete with rivals like Google, China’s DeepSeek, and OpenAI.
