Meta offered OpenAI employees compensation packages worth more than $100 million, but the “best people” turned them down, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a podcast with his brother Jack, TechCrunch reports.
According to Altman, Meta has been actively trying to build a team for its new superintelligence unit. It is headed by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, and the researchers would report directly to Mark Zuckerberg. Despite the aggressive hiring campaign, Altman says that key OpenAI employees are staying with the company.
"[Meta has] started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like, $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 decided to take him up on that," said Sam Altman.
Altman suggested that OpenAI employees believe in the company’s greater chance of achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) and the importance of a culture of innovation. He also criticized Meta’s approach, saying that focusing on money rather than mission doesn’t make for an effective team.
Among those Meta tried to lure were OpenAI researcher Noam Brown and Google AI architect Koray Cavuccoglu. Both attempts were unsuccessful.
Meta recently invested in Scale AI and has brought on several notable talent, including Jack Ray (Google DeepMind) and Johan Schalkwyk (Sesame AI). But the company has yet to build a full-fledged team that can compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.
In parallel, OpenAI, according to Altman, is considering the idea of launching a social network where the feed would be shaped by AI, focusing on the user's wishes, rather than algorithmic models. Meta is also experimenting with AI networks, but its Meta AI application is currently poorly received by users.