Overview

• Meta has dangled signing bonuses of up to $100 million alongside seven- to eight-figure annual salaries to lure OpenAI engineers.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the 'Uncapped' podcast that none of OpenAI’s top staff accepted Meta’s offers.
• Meta considers OpenAI its chief rival in AI development and has elevated the hiring initiative to a personal priority for Mark Zuckerberg.
• Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49 percent stake in Scale AI and brought on CEO Alexandr Wang and other team members for its superintelligence effort.
• The recruitment blitz reflects Meta’s dissatisfaction with its AI progress, highlighted by months-long delays to its Llama 4 Behemoth model.