Meta tried to poach OpenAI talent with $100 million signing bonuses, Sam Altman says

By lauraharris // 2025-06-24

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims Meta has offered signing bonuses up to $100 million and large compensation packages to lure top OpenAI talent, but says none of the company's "best people" have left.
Altman criticized Meta's approach, arguing that high guaranteed pay and efforts to copy OpenAI undermine innovation and create a culture that doesn't support true AI breakthroughs.
Frustrated by Meta's lagging AI progress, Mark Zuckerberg is investing billions into a new "superintelligence" initiative and recently took a $14.3 billion stake in Scale AI, a leading data-labeling startup.
Meta has hired Jack Rae from Google DeepMind and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI, with Alexandr Wang of Scale AI expected to lead a new AI research lab within Meta.
Zuckerberg has taken a hands-on role in talent acquisition, personally meeting candidates and mirroring Google and Microsoft's strategy of taking major stakes in AI startups rather than full acquisitions.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has accused Meta Platforms of luring top artificial intelligence (AI) talent from rival OpenAI by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million. Speaking on the "Uncapped" podcast, hosted by his brother Jack, Altman revealed that Meta has tried to hire "a lot of people" from the company but has so far failed to recruit any of OpenAI's "best people." Altman claimed that Meta tried to recruit OpenAI's top researchers and engineers, offering not only massive signing bonuses but also significantly larger annual compensation packages. Despite these overtures, he claimed that none of OpenAI's "best people" have taken the bait. "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," he said during the podcast episode released on Tuesday, June 17. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things." Altman also criticized Meta's strategy of using upfront, guaranteed pay as a talent acquisition tool, arguing that it risks creating a culture that undervalues innovation. "I think that there's a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying 'we're just going to try to copy OpenAI,'" he added. "That basically never works. You're always going to where your competitor was, and you don't build up a culture of learning what it's like to innovate."

Zuckerberg ramping up efforts to catch up in AI race

Altman's revelation came after CNBC reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been ramping up efforts to catch up in the AI race, investing billions to build out a new "superintelligence" lab. The company's Meta AI division is behind the Llama family of open-source large language models, which have become foundational tools for many developers. According to the report, Zuckerberg's frustrations with Meta's AI progress led to the recent $14.3 billion deal for a 49 percent stake in Scale AI, the data-labeling startup founded by Alexandr Wang in 2016. Zuckerberg sees Wang as a transformational figure, a "wartime CEO" who understands both the technical foundations of AI and the business discipline needed to scale it. Wang is expected to lead a new AI research lab within Meta, bringing along key members of his team. Rather than acquiring Scale AI outright, Meta is following a playbook similar to recent moves by Google and Microsoft, who have taken large stakes in AI startups like Character.AI and Inflection AI. Scale AI has become an essential player in the generative AI space by providing data infrastructure to power training for companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Meta itself, which is one of its largest customers. (Related: Meta acquires $14.8B stake in Scale AI as Zuckerberg pushes for AI supremacy.) Meta has also recently hired Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, who confirmed he is leaving the company to join Meta. Rae, who confirmed he is leaving the company to join Meta, will be part of a newly formed elite unit focused on building artificial general intelligence (AGI), a more advanced and flexible form of AI. Also joining is Johan Schalkwyk, a veteran machine learning leader from AI voice startup Sesame AI Inc. Zuckerberg has been personally recruiting top minds for the group, sometimes meeting candidates at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto. Visit BigTech.news for more similar stories. Watch this video of Google and Big Pharma being exposed through a Meta-AI analysis.

This video is from the Haixus channel on Brighteon.com.

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Zuckerberg ramping up efforts to catch up in AI race

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