OpenAI CEO Sam Altman alleges that Meta has offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them, as the tech giant seeks to ramp up its artificial intelligence strategy.
The alleged attempts by Meta to hire top engineers of OpenAI to develop AI models are observed to be the latest signs of frenzy to hire.
They seem to come at a time when the Facebook owner is working on building its superintelligence unit to catch up with competitors.
Competition for AI talent has reached an intense excitement on the belief that individual contributors can make or break companies treating superstar researchers like professional athletes.
Also Read: Jan Koum: From Humble Beginnings to the Pinnacle of Silicon Valley
During the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother, Sam says, "They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team, you know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year. At least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that. I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor."
Also Read: Mary Barra: Icon Who Carved Woman Leadership Path in the Auto Industry
Sam’s comments come just days after Meta invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling startup Scale AI, and hired its top boss, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team.
Meta, has postponed the launches of new open-source AI models that could rival competitors like Google, DeepSeek and OpenAI as it has suffered from staff departures. It was once recognized as a leader in open-source AI models.