OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reveals why ChatGPT maker's 'best people' rejected Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers: They're a company that's ...
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivered a brutal assessment of Meta 's innovation capabilities, explaining why his top engineers turned down Mark Zuckerberg 's eye-watering $100 million signing bonuses.
"There's many things I respect about Meta as a company, but I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation," Altman said on his brother's "Uncapped" podcast Tuesday, revealing the core reason behind his staff's rejection of the offers.
Speaking candidly about Meta's aggressive poaching attempts, Altman said the Facebook founder had "started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team" but boasted that "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that."
Why OpenAI engineers chose Sam Altman’s OpenAI over working for Mark Zuckerberg
The OpenAI chief suggested his employees see the company as having "a much better shot actually, delivering on superintelligence and also may eventually be the more valuable company." Despite Meta's $1.77 trillion market cap dwarfing OpenAI's $300 billion valuation, the ChatGPT maker's engineers appear unconvinced by pure financial incentives.
Altman criticized Meta's strategy of focusing on massive upfront compensation packages, saying it would damage company culture. "The degree to which they are focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don't think that's going to set up a great culture," he said.
Meta's desperate talent hunt amid AI setbacks
Meta's aggressive recruitment drive comes after a series of embarrassing setbacks in the AI race. The company has delayed its flagship "Behemoth" AI model and faced criticism over inflated performance metrics for its Llama 4 language model.
"I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Altman said. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things."
The Facebook founder has been personally calling AI researchers as part of his frantic bid to build a "superintelligence" team, even rearranging Meta's Menlo Park headquarters to put the new unit near his office. Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and hired its founder Alexandr Wang , but the talent war for AI supremacy rages on.
"There's many things I respect about Meta as a company, but I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation," Altman said on his brother's "Uncapped" podcast Tuesday, revealing the core reason behind his staff's rejection of the offers.
Speaking candidly about Meta's aggressive poaching attempts, Altman said the Facebook founder had "started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team" but boasted that "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that."
Why OpenAI engineers chose Sam Altman’s OpenAI over working for Mark Zuckerberg
The OpenAI chief suggested his employees see the company as having "a much better shot actually, delivering on superintelligence and also may eventually be the more valuable company." Despite Meta's $1.77 trillion market cap dwarfing OpenAI's $300 billion valuation, the ChatGPT maker's engineers appear unconvinced by pure financial incentives.
Altman criticized Meta's strategy of focusing on massive upfront compensation packages, saying it would damage company culture. "The degree to which they are focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don't think that's going to set up a great culture," he said.
Meta's desperate talent hunt amid AI setbacks
Meta's aggressive recruitment drive comes after a series of embarrassing setbacks in the AI race. The company has delayed its flagship "Behemoth" AI model and faced criticism over inflated performance metrics for its Llama 4 language model.
"I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Altman said. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things."
The Facebook founder has been personally calling AI researchers as part of his frantic bid to build a "superintelligence" team, even rearranging Meta's Menlo Park headquarters to put the new unit near his office. Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and hired its founder Alexandr Wang , but the talent war for AI supremacy rages on.
Next Story