Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, is reportedly offering compensation packages topping $100 million in an effort to attract OpenAI researchers to join his superintelligence team, however, the offer failed, according to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Meta has resorted to high-profile poaching attempts as it intensifies its goals for artificial general intelligence (AGI). The company apparently sent offers to top researchers at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and hired Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, to head its AI superintelligence division.
Top researchers like Noam Brown, the chief researcher at OpenAI, and Koray Kavukcuoglu, an AI executive at Google, were among the targets, but both declined, and Meta failed to hire them. Some of the names that are prominent in the IT industry were hired by Meta, including Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI and Jack Rae from DeepMind.
The CEO of OpenAI confessed extravagant offers of Meta during a podcast with his brother, Jack Altman, but highlighted that they haven’t been very successful. Altman stated:
“They’ve started making these giant offers… $100 million signing bonuses, more than that in compensation per year. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have taken him up on that.”
According to Altman, top researchers are more drawn to OpenAI’s mission-driven culture than Meta’s generous compensation. He also added:
“I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,”.
He insinuates that Meta’s revenue focus is insufficiently deep for ground-breaking AI work.
In the midst of strong revelry from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, as well as Anthropic, Meta just purchased 49% share in Scale AI, Wang’s former company, and is attempting to grow its AI team.
Meanwhile, Altman hinted at a new frontier: OpenAI may launch its own AI-powered social media platform, focused on personalized content curation beyond traditional algorithmic feeds. Meta is also experimenting in that space through its Meta AI app, but early user confusion suggests a rocky start.
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