In a recent podcast appearance on Uncapped with Jack Altman, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman shared some interesting details about Meta’s attempts to lure away talent from his company. According to Altman, Meta tried to poach some of OpenAI’s top employees with offers of up to $100 million in signing bonuses and other lucrative compensation packages. 
Despite the massive financial incentives, Altman revealed that none of OpenAI’s ‘best people’ were swayed by the offers, and they chose to remain with the company.
Meta’s hiring spree in the generative AI space has been widely reported, and Altman acknowledged that the competition has been aggressively trying to secure top-tier talent. However, he believes that the core mission of OpenAI – the development of Accelerated General Intelligence (AGI) – is what keeps his employees committed. In contrast, Meta’s focus on simply poaching talent with large salaries without a clear innovation-driven mission doesn’t align with the values and long-term goals that OpenAI strives for.
Altman further pointed out that innovation is key to excelling in the generative AI field. While he respects Meta in some aspects, he criticized the company for its lack of innovation, suggesting that this is one of the reasons why Meta’s attempts to attract OpenAI’s talent have largely been unsuccessful.
Meta has had some success in the past, with researchers like Noam Brown from OpenAI and Koray Kavukcuoglu from Google joining the company. However, Altman remains confident that as long as OpenAI’s employees are aligned with the company’s mission, Meta’s attempts to recruit them will continue to fall short.