Sam Altman Claims Meta Tried to Poach OpenAI Staff, Offering as Much as $100M Signing Bonuses

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed that Meta has previously tried poaching some of its employees. However, the revelations do not end there as Altman revealed that Meta has offered these OpenAI staffers as much as $100 million in signing bonuses among many other perks to enjoy.

These lucrative offers and blinding perks are massive, with Meta revealed to be willing to spend as much as this to bolster its AI workforce with experts that could help improve its technologies and what they have to offer.

Sam Altman Claims Meta Tried Poaching OpenAI Staff

In a new episode of the "Uncapped" podcast by Jack Altman, an early-stage investor at Alt Capital and brother to OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman revealed that Meta has attempted to poach his company's staff to join them on their AI ventures. According to the OpenAI CEO, Meta has tried multiple times to push OpenAI staffers into jumping ship and joining them in developing their AI models.

Sam Altman revealed that Meta did not only share the offer to one or two OpenAI employees but did this on a much larger scale. It was revealed by the OpenAI CEO that despite the lucrative offers of Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, they were unsuccessful as their employees remained loyal and unmoved.

The New York Times reported that Meta's offer to these employees offers significant perks and bonuses, as well as getting the chance to work physically near Zuckerberg's desk. They were also told that they were to report directly to the new team led by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang.

It was also revealed that Meta not only targeted OpenAI staffers but also tried to lure Google DeepMind employees into jumping ship.

It cannot be confirmed as of press time if there are staff from Google DeepMind who made the jump over to Meta.

Meta Offered as Much as $100M Signing Bonus

At one point, Altman revealed in the podcast that Meta tried offering an employee as much as a $100 million signing bonus to join the company and leave OpenAI. This does not yet include their other offers of a massive compensation package that is allegedly larger than the bonus.

It was revealed by Altman that OpenAI's employees chose to stay because they have a better chance of developing artificial general intelligence. If it does so, OpenAI would be a more valuable company than Meta.

Moreover, Altman believes that Meta focuses more on its lucrative offers to its employees rather than focusing on developing AGI, as per TechCrunch.

Poaching in the Big Tech Industry

The tech industry has seen its fair share of poaching as competition is tight in the market. Apple has been previously rumored to poach Samsung's electric car battery experts in their previous venture of developing the Apple Car.

On the other hand, Fitbit also faced allegations and a lawsuit from Jawbone for poaching its employees, and at the same time, obtaining trade secrets.