Meta tried to poach OpenAI staff with $128m bonuses, says CEO Sam Altman
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While Meta has sought to hire “a lot of people” at OpenAI, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that", Mr Altman said.
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NEW YORK – OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said Facebook parent Meta Platforms has offered his employees sign-on bonuses as high as US$100 million (S$128 million), with even larger annual compensation packages, as it seeks to build a top artificial intelligence (AI) team.
“It is crazy,” Mr Altman said on the podcast Uncapped, which is hosted by his brother. While Meta has sought to hire “a lot of people” at OpenAI, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that”, he added.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally recruiting for a new “superintelligence” group, offering high sums to top AI researchers across the industry.
Last week, the company announced a US$14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Meta also recruited Scale’s CEO Alexandr Wang to join the team.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has poached top engineers from multiple tech firms, including Dr Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, Bloomberg has reported.
“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Mr Altman said. “I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”
He had a theory for why people are turning down the offers.
“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,” he said, noting the cultural risks of creating jobs that could become more about the money than the work. “I think we understand a lot of things they don’t.” BLOOMBERG
