Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is offering eye-watering sums to hire the best minds in artificial intelligence, but it appears money is not buying loyalty or success.
In an attempt to bolster Meta’s superintelligence initiative, the company has been dangling compensation packages of over $100 million to lure top AI researchers, particularly from OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
This is tied to an internal drive led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, now spearheading Meta’s advanced AI team from an office reportedly just steps away from Zuckerberg’s.
Despite the high figures involved in the Meta AI hiring initiative, the campaign has largely hit a wall.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on the Uncapped podcast with his brother Jack Altman on Tuesday, confirmed the reports and offered his own assessment.
“[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.”
Meta’s targets reportedly included high-profile figures like OpenAI’s Noam Brown and DeepMind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu, but both declined the offers.
The failure to secure these names leads to questions about the effectiveness, and ethics, of Meta’s recruitment tactics in what is quickly becoming a high-stakes talent competition.
Altman didn’t stop there as he used the podcast as a platform to criticise Meta’s approach to innovation, drawing a line between OpenAI’s mission-oriented culture and what he sees as Meta’s cash-first strategy.
“I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” he said, doubling down on his view that simply catching up isn’t enough in the AI game. Companies, he argued, must genuinely lead.
Beyond recruitment, Meta has poured billions into its AI bets, including a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, the company’s second-largest acquisition after WhatsApp.
It’s already brought in Google DeepMind’s Jack Rae and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI, among others. However, according to Altman, it will take more than star hires to change a transformative AI journey.
He credits OpenAI’s retention strength, reportedly one of the highest in the industry at 67%, to its focus on a collective mission: achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The underlying message is that for OpenAI’s top engineers, purpose trumps pay; so the Meta AI hiring approach requires a different direction.
There’s also a growing front in the competition for influence, social media. Altman revealed that OpenAI is exploring the development of a new AI-powered social app designed to serve feeds based not on algorithms, but on user intent. It’s a direct shot at the core of Meta’s business model.
Meta, on its end, is already testing similar waters through its Meta AI app, but user feedback has been rocky, with reports of confusion and some deeply personal AI chat interactions accidentally shared more widely than intended, a potential privacy minefield.
If OpenAI succeeds in rolling out a more intuitive, AI-driven alternative to traditional social media, it could disrupt Meta’s position, and how the internet itself is experienced.
So, not just about who can pay the most or hire the fastest, but who is building up to be a deeper contest between purpose and profit, between foundational innovation and reactive ambition. And while Meta may have the cash, OpenAI, for now, seems to have the conviction.
