Rumor mill: Within the escalating race for synthetic intelligence dominance, Meta has launched an aggressive recruitment marketing campaign, providing high researchers compensation packages which have shocked the tech world. Led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the corporate is constructing a brand new “superintelligence” crew and has reportedly provided salaries price as much as $100 million to lure expertise from rivals akin to OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
The recruitment drive has a private factor: former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang heads Meta’s new AI group, and a few new hires are mentioned to be working at desks near Zuckerberg himself. Final week, Meta finalized a $14.3 billion funding in Scale AI, signaling the corporate’s dedication to catching up within the AI race.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed these studies straight on a podcast hosted by his brother, Jack Altman. “Meta has began making these, like, large presents to lots of people on our crew,” Altman mentioned. “You recognize, like, $100 million signing bonuses, greater than that [in] compensation per yr […] I am actually joyful that, at the least up to now, none of our greatest individuals have determined to take him up on that.”
New episode of Uncapped with @sama. Take pleasure in 🤗 pic.twitter.com/2IxYt3B4Gm
– Jack Altman (@jaltma) June 17, 2025
Altman mentioned that he has heard Meta considers OpenAI its largest competitor, and that he respects Meta’s aggressiveness and its continued efforts to attempt new issues. However he described Meta’s strategy as “loopy.” He famous that whereas his rival has sought to rent “lots of people” from OpenAI, his workers are motivated by the idea that their firm has a greater shot at attaining synthetic basic intelligence and will in the end develop into extra beneficial than Meta.
“There’s many issues I respect about Meta as an organization, however I do not assume they’re an organization that is nice at innovation,” Altman mentioned.
Meta, as soon as identified for its prominence in open-source AI improvement, has skilled worker exits and delayed the discharge of recent open-source AI fashions that may compete with these from Google, DeepSeek in China, and OpenAI.
Altman added that Meta’s deal with huge pay packages somewhat than on the mission of delivering AGI might undermine the form of tradition wanted for true breakthroughs.
Though aggressive salaries are important for hiring within the tech business, different vital elements additionally play a job. On a March 2024 episode of the “Make investments Like The Finest” podcast, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, mentioned that to draw main AI expertise, corporations should not solely supply excellent incentives but additionally assure instant entry to highly effective computing assets.
“I attempted to rent a really senior researcher from Meta, and you already know what they mentioned? ‘Come again to me when you’ve got 10,000 H100 GPUs,'” Srinivas mentioned, referencing the AI chips made by Nvidia.
Meta’s efforts haven’t been fully fruitless. The corporate has efficiently recruited notable researchers, together with Jack Rae from Google DeepMind and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI. Nevertheless, makes an attempt to poach OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu have been unsuccessful.
Altman’s feedback replicate the fierce competitors for AI expertise and the cultural challenges going through corporations that rely solely on monetary incentives. As Meta continues to take a position billions and broaden its superintelligence initiative, the query stays whether or not cash should purchase the form of innovation wanted to guide the subsequent period of synthetic intelligence.
