Meta fails to lure AI experts despite $100M offers
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly launched an aggressive recruitment campaign to attract top artificial intelligence talent to its new superintelligence team, reports a Kazinform News Agency correspondent.
According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Zuckerberg has been offering compensation packages exceeding $100 million to researchers from rival labs, including OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
“They’ve started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said during a podcast with his brother, Jack Altman, released Tuesday. “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.”
Altman confirmed that Meta tried to lure away key talent - including OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu - but those efforts did not succeed. According to him, OpenAI’s researchers believe the company is more likely to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) and become more valuable in the long run.
Criticizing Meta’s culture, Altman suggested that high pay alone cannot build a world-class AI lab. “I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” he said. “Meta’s current AI efforts have not worked as well as they hoped.”
Despite setbacks, Meta has managed to recruit notable names, including former Google DeepMind scientist Jack Rae and Sesame AI’s Johan Schalkwyk. Meta’s new AI team is being led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, and will reportedly work directly near Zuckerberg. Meta has also made a strategic investment in Wang’s former company.
However, competition remains fierce. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind are advancing rapidly, and OpenAI is expected to release a new open AI model in the coming months - a move that may further challenge Meta’s position in the AI race.
Looking ahead, Altman hinted at a possible clash in social media as well. He described a future AI-powered social media platform that could deliver hyper-personalized content, diverging from the conventional algorithmic feeds used by apps like those under Meta.
While Meta is currently testing similar functionality through its Meta AI app, the initiative has met with some user confusion. Meanwhile, reports suggest OpenAI is also internally developing a social networking product.
Earlier, it was reported that OpenAI was awarded a $200 million contract by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop artificial intelligence tools for national security purposes.