Meta offered $100mn bonuses to OpenAI employees: Sam Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed on Wednesday that Meta is aggressively trying to recruit OpenAI employees by offering staggering bonuses, in an effort to bolster its AI division amid intensifying competition.

In a June 18 interview with his brother, Jack Altman, on the topic “The Future of AI,” Sam Altman revealed that Meta had offered $100 million bonuses to OpenAI staff in an unsuccessful bid to lure them.

Responding to a question about Meta’s scale, he remarked that Meta views OpenAI as its biggest competitor, stating that Meta’s current AI initiatives have not progressed as well as the company had hoped.

“Meta started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team — like $100 million signing bonuses. I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up,” Sam Altman said.

He also criticized Meta’s approach, stating that the company is “not great at innovation,” while OpenAI has built a culture of repeatable innovation.

His comments follow recent news that Meta invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling startup Scale AI and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team. Reports also suggest Meta has been offering nine-figure annual salaries to Scale AI executives.

Once recognized as a leader in open-source AI models, Meta has recently faced internal challenges, including staff departures and delayed launches of new models that could compete with rivals such as Google, China’s DeepSeek, and OpenAI.

Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to invest at least $60 billion in AI in 2025.

In addition to its AI push, Meta is also looking to monetize its popular messaging platform WhatsApp by introducing ads.