OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed that Meta is attempting to poach his company’s top AI talent with massive offers, including signing bonuses of up to $100 million.
Speaking on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother, Altman claimed Meta has aggressively targeted OpenAI employees as it builds its superintelligence division to compete in the fast-evolving artificial intelligence race.
“They started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team—like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that in compensation per year,” said Altman. He added that, “at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
The comments underscore the intensifying battle among tech giants for elite AI engineers, who are now being courted like top-tier athletes due to their potential to significantly impact a company’s future.
Altman further stated, “I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor.”
This comes just days after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a data-labeling company, and appointed its CEO Alexandr Wang to lead its superintelligence team. Once a pioneer in open-source AI, Meta has faced delays in launching new models and staff attrition, while rivals like OpenAI, Google, and China’s DeepSeek push ahead.
Meta has yet to respond to Altman’s claims.