OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has accused Meta of trying to recruit key OpenAI employees by offering massive financial incentives, including signing bonuses of up to $100 million. Altman made the claim during an episode of the Uncapped (a podcast hosted by his brother, Jack Altman), where he said the social media giant is targeting some of OpenAI’s top researchers and engineers with unusually large compensation offers.
According to Altman, these offers include not only massive sign-on bonuses but also extremely high annual compensation packages. However, despite the size of the offers, Altman said that none of OpenAI’s top employees have accepted them. He described the OpenAI team as deeply committed to the company’s mission and said that money alone would not influence them to leave.
These claims from Altman come at a time when the Mark Zuckerberg-led company is intensifying its efforts in AI development. Recently, the company invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, acquiring a 49% stake in the data-labelling startup. It has also formed a new ‘superintelligence’ team, led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang (who recently annoucned his exit to join Meta), to accelerate progress in advanced AI development. Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2025 ‘a defining year for AI’ and announced plans to invest around $65 billion to expand the company’s artificial intelligence infrastructure. In April 2025, the social media giant launched a standalone AI assistant app powered by its latest large language model, Llama 4.
But despite all these efforts, the company still appears to be struggling with its AI initiatives. For example, Meta’s AI chatbot has recently come under intense scrutiny following reports that it engaged in sexually explicit conversations with users, including minors. The company has also postponed the release of its ‘Llama 4 Behemoth’ AI model, reportedly due to internal performance concerns.
Considering all these challenges, it is no surprise that the social media powerhouse is exploring potential ways to attract top AI talent (even if that includes poaching from rivals). During the podcast, Altman also questioned Meta’s approach to innovation and its track record. “They’re not a company known for innovation,” he said on the podcast. The OpenAI leader stated that while Meta is willing to spend large sums of money to attract talent, it may struggle to build strong AI products without a clear mission or culture of innovation. The entire situation becomes even more noteworthy as the ChatGPT maker is reportedly in the early stages of developing its own social networking platform.
Meanwhile, Meta has also been actively targeting Google DeepMind researchers as well (in addition to those at OpenAI). Earlier reports indicated that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally emailed DeepMind team members to recruit them, even offering positions without formal interviews. The company has reportedly already brought on at least one senior researcher from DeepMind – principal scientist Jack Rae – who is expected to join Meta’s newly formed superintelligence team.
