The battle for top AI talent between OpenAI and Meta is heating up, sparking a compensation war with offers reportedly reaching up to $100 million. Meta has recently hired four senior researchers from OpenAI, including deep-learning experts, to strengthen its new superintelligence lab—raising concerns over a talent exodus.
OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, described Meta’s recruitment tactics as a “home intrusion,” while CEO Sam Altman emphasized the importance of mission-driven culture over massive paychecks. Despite Meta’s aggressive pursuit, Altman claims none of OpenAI’s top talent has accepted the offers so far.
Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg and working closely with Scale AI, is pushing hard to accelerate its AGI ambitions after lagging behind OpenAI and Google. While Meta’s open-source AI models like Llama have gained respect in the research community, they haven’t matched the global impact of ChatGPT or Gemini.
Altman summed it up: “It’s not enough to catch up — you have to actually innovate.”