Hands off! Meta offers $100M signing bonuses to poach OpenAI talent

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has offered $100 million signing bonuses to recruit his company’s employees, highlighting the intense competition for top AI talent. The aggressive recruitment strategy reflects Meta’s push to build its superintelligence unit and catch up with competitors in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape.

What they’re saying: Altman disclosed the recruitment attempts during an appearance on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother.

• “They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said. “You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year.”
• “At least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” he added.
• “I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman noted.

The big picture: Competition for AI talent has reached unprecedented levels as companies treat superstar researchers like professional athletes, believing individual contributors can make or break their AI strategies.

• Meta has been working to build its superintelligence unit to compete with rivals in what has become a feverish race for top engineering talent.
• The recruitment efforts come just days after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a data-labeling startup, and hired its CEO Alexandr Wang to lead the new superintelligence team.

Why this matters: Meta’s aggressive talent acquisition strategy signals the company’s recognition that it’s falling behind in the AI race despite once being considered a leader in open-source AI models.

• The Facebook parent has suffered from staff departures and has postponed launches of new open-source AI models that could rival competitors like Google, China’s DeepSeek, and OpenAI.
• The $100 million signing bonuses represent the extreme lengths companies are willing to go to secure AI expertise in an increasingly competitive market.

Key context: Reuters could not immediately verify the compensation figures, and Meta did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.