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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta offered his employees $100 million bonuses and "giant" annual salaries exceeding $100 million in an unsuccessful bid to recruit talent. Altman shared the details on the "Uncapped with Jack Altman" podcast, highlighting the intense competition for AI expertise between OpenAI and Facebook's parent company.
"It is crazy," Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. "I'm really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that."
The OpenAI cofounder said Meta had made the offers to "a lot of people on our team."
The social media titan has invested billions of dollars in artificial intelligence technology amid fierce competition in the AI race with rivals OpenAI, Google and Microsoft.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in January that the firm planned to invest at least $60 billion in AI this year, with ambitions to lead in the technology. Last week, Meta entered into a deal reportedly worth more than $10 billion with Scale AI, a company specializing in labeling data used in training artificial intelligence models.
As part of the deal, company founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta to help with the tech giant's AI ambitions, including its work on superintelligence efforts.
Comparing Meta to his company, Altman said on the podcast that "OpenAI has a much better shot at delivering on superintelligence." "I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join... I don't think that's going to set up a great culture," the OpenAI boss added.
"There's many things I respect about Meta as a company," said Altman. "But I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation."
According to US media reports, Meta has also offered nine-figure annual salaries to Scale AI executives.
