The AI talent wars are heating up as Meta attempts to poach talent from OpenAI with $100 million signing bonuses and even higher salaries — but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company’s “best people” have turned down Meta’s offer.
On an episode of the “Uncapped” podcast that aired on Tuesday, Altman, 40, spoke candidly about Meta’s efforts to recruit OpenAI researchers with “giant offers.” While Meta’s efforts have been unsuccessful so far, Altman expressed disbelief at the nine-figure signing bonuses and salaries. The average employee at OpenAI makes $1.13 million per year, according to Levels.fyi.
“They [Meta] started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said in the podcast interview. “$100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp [compensation] per year. It is crazy. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Google Employee Makes in a Year
Altman said that the reason OpenAI researchers chose to stay at the startup instead of moving to higher salaries at Meta was because they think OpenAI has “a much better shot” of reaching superintelligence, or the point where AI surpasses human intelligence in memory, reasoning, and knowledge.
He said that OpenAI had created a “special” type of culture that wasn’t based on high upfront compensation but on the work and the mission of the startup. OpenAI’s mission of developing AI to benefit “all of humanity” comes first, with the financial incentives flowing from achieving that mission, Altman said.
“I hope that we can be the best place in the world to do [AI] research,” Altman asserted.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Meta has recently started assembling a 50-person team, the Superintelligence lab, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, is reportedly overseeing the hiring. According to a Bloomberg report last week, Zuckerberg has been offering AI researchers compensation packages ranging from seven to nine figures to join the team.
Zuckerberg wants to pull ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google and make Meta lead the race to achieve superintelligence, according to the report.
However, Meta still appears to be losing AI talent. Deedy Das, a principal at venture capital firm Menlo Partners, wrote on X that he had heard of three cases last week of Meta losing researchers to OpenAI and Anthropic despite offering them more than $2 million per year.
“The AI talent wars are absolutely ridiculous,” Das wrote.
Meta is currently offering $2M+/yr in offers for AI talent and still losing them to OpenAI and Anthropic. Heard ~3 such cases this week.
The AI talent wars are absolutely ridiculous.
Today, Anthropic has the highest ~80% retention 2 years in and is the #1 (large) company top AI… pic.twitter.com/YSv5UNV5H2
— Deedy (@deedydas) June 10, 2025
Meta has also recently made a hefty investment in exchange for fresh talent. The company announced last week that it was investing $14.3 billion into data labeling startup Scale AI, in return for a 49% stake in the startup and the acquisition of talent. Scale AI’s 28-year-old CEO Alexandr Wang will reportedly join Meta’s superintelligence team in a top leadership role.
Both Meta and OpenAI have substantial user bases. Zuckerberg said in May that Meta’s AI assistant has one billion monthly active users. Meanwhile, OpenAI said in late March that it had 500 million weekly active users.
The AI talent wars are heating up as Meta attempts to poach talent from OpenAI with $100 million signing bonuses and even higher salaries — but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company’s “best people” have turned down Meta’s offer.
On an episode of the “Uncapped” podcast that aired on Tuesday, Altman, 40, spoke candidly about Meta’s efforts to recruit OpenAI researchers with “giant offers.” While Meta’s efforts have been unsuccessful so far, Altman expressed disbelief at the nine-figure signing bonuses and salaries. The average employee at OpenAI makes $1.13 million per year, according to Levels.fyi.
“They [Meta] started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said in the podcast interview. “$100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp [compensation] per year. It is crazy. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
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