Meta’s Mega Moves: Altman Alleges $100M Offers to Lure OpenAI Engineers

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has claimed that Meta has offered signing bonuses worth up to $100 million to top engineers from his company in an aggressive bid to poach talent. The statement came during an episode of the “Unsupervised” podcast, hosted by Altman's brother. The revelation highlights the intensifying competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry for top-tier researchers.

"They (Meta) have offered our people these enormous packages—amounting to more than $100 million a year," Altman said.

As the global race to dominate AI technology escalates, major tech firms are fiercely vying for talented minds capable of advancing the next generation of intelligent systems. Altman remarked, “Meta sees us as their biggest competitor.”

Recently, Meta made headlines with a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, a leading data-labeling company. The tech giant has also appointed Alexander Wang, CEO of Scale AI, to lead its newly established Superintelligence Unit—a move seen as part of its strategic expansion in frontier AI development.

Meta has not yet commented publicly on the allegations.