Altman Says Meta Offered $100 Million Bonuses to Poach OpenAI Staff

Meta reportedly attempted to poach key OpenAI staff by dangling massive financial incentives, including $100 million bonuses and similarly sized annual salaries, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Speaking on the “Uncapped with Jack Altman” podcast, Altman revealed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, had made aggressive offers to numerous OpenAI employees in an effort to build up its generative AI teams. “It is crazy,” he told his brother Jack during the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”

Meta has not responded to the claims, but the tech giant’s recent AI push speaks volumes. With a planned $60 billion investment in AI this year, Meta is gunning to lead the race, competing with industry heavyweights like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.

Last week, Meta signed a reported $10 billion deal with Scale AI to turbocharge its AI training capabilities. As part of the arrangement, Scale AI’s CEO Alexandr Wang is set to join Meta to bolster its ambitions around superintelligence.

Altman, however, remains skeptical of Meta’s strategy. He said OpenAI has a stronger chance of achieving superintelligence and criticized the rival’s culture. “The strategy of huge guaranteed compensation up front if that’s your pitch, I don’t think it builds a great culture.”

While he acknowledged Meta’s strengths, Altman didn’t mince words: “There’s many things I respect about Meta as a company. But I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation.”