Meta Corporation has launched a massive hiring spree for top AI researchers, offering compensation packages of up to $300 million over four years, with more than $100 million paid in the first year, including stock options. According to WIRED, at least 10 such offers have been made to OpenAI employees, but not all have accepted them.
Meta is hiring researchers for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) team, led by Alexander Wang (ex-CEO of Scale AI) and Nat Friedman (ex-CEO of GitHub). Meta has hired at least 11 researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, including Shengjia Zhao, Shuchao Bi, Jiahui Yu, Hongyu Ren, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who worked on the GPT-4, o3, and Vision Transformer models.
Zuckerberg has been personally reaching out to candidates, promising unlimited access to computing resources, including GPUs, which are critical for AI research. Some at OpenAI are hesitant, believing their influence at Meta will be less than at their current company.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone denied the reported compensation amounts, noting that such amounts only apply to a few senior positions. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth added that the talent market is "hot," but $100 million bonuses are not standard practice.
OpenAI has reacted sharply. Chief Scientific Officer Mark Chen compared Meta's actions to "stealing from home," and CEO Sam Altman called them "disgusting" in an internal memo, stressing that "missionaries will beat mercenaries." OpenAI is reviewing compensation to retain talent.