In the escalating artificial intelligence arena, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has accused Meta of attempting to poach talent with lucrative offers, including substantial signing bonuses and higher salaries.
Altman stated that Meta, with a market capitalization of $1.8 trillion, began making "gigantic offers" to his employees. This move follows Meta's challenges in its AI development efforts.
Meta is aggressively seeking top researchers and engineers, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally involved in talent acquisition. The company recently invested $15 billion in data labeling startup Scale AI and hired co-founder Alexandr Wang.
Meta has faced criticism, including accusations of manipulating evaluation methods for its Llama 4 language model. The company has also seen key AI researchers leave, indicating internal instability.
Altman criticized Meta's strategy of offering high upfront compensation, focusing on salaries over mission and work quality. OpenAI offers competitive salaries for software engineers, ranging from $238,000 to $1.34 million, while Meta's range is $212,000 to $3.7 million.
Meta is also trying to improve its public image and address criticisms of its AI models. The future of the AI industry will depend on companies' ability to innovate and attract top talent.