Sam Altman Reveals Meta’s Offering $100M Bonuses To His Talent

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OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman, one of the greatest entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley these days, is going head to head with another entrepreneurial G.O.A.T. Mark Zuckerberg in the battle for super intelligence through AI. And Sam Altman has just fired a shot over Meta’s bow by revealing just how much Meta values OpenAI’s top employees.

In a recent podcast appearance with Altman’s brother Jack, Sam Altman revealed that Meta is offering OpenAI’s top talent signing bonuses up to $100 million and similar compensation packages. What’s even wilder, Altman says none of the top talent at OpenAI has yet to take the massive $100 million signing bonus to lure them away from OpenAI.

The clip has gone viral over the past 12 hours, and it’s easy to understand why. Most people in this world could not fathom an employee being offered a $100 million signing bonus to go work for a tech company. That’s more than the vast majority of professional athletes make in their entire careers! Here is Sam Altman talking about it (full quotes below):

Sam Altman reveals the massive offers coming from Meta to OpenAI’s top talent, saying “I remember once hearing Zuck talk about how Google, in the early days of Facebook, it was rational for them to try social even though it was like clear to people at Facebook that that was not going to work (at Google). And I feel a little bit similar here But they started making these like giant offers to a lot of people on our team.”

Sam Altman continued, saying “like $100 million signing bonuses, (and more than that comp per year. And actually it is crazy. I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”

Here is where Sam Altman’s revelations turn a bit combative… He says that “people sort of look at the two paths and say OpenAI’s got a much better shot at actually delivering on Super Intelligence.” Altman then says his employees who have rebuffed the $100 million signing bonuses and $100M+ annual compensation packages believe that OpenAI will eventually be a more valuable company than Meta.

For context, Facebook employees made an estimated $5.2 BILLION on the day of Meta’s IPO. An estimated 1,000+ employees at Meta became millionaires on the day of the IPO.

Then Sam Altman reveals his thoughts on why he thinks the huge bonuses and compensation packages are a losing strategy, and I’m not sure I agree with him. He suggests that a company positioning itself as having a ton of starting capital to go out and build with endless opportunity instead of focusing on the work itself is not going to set up a great working culture. Sam Altman then reveals there are “many things” he respects about Meta but he claims they are not good at innovation, which will certainly be a controversial topic in Palo Alto this morning.

That’s not really adding up to me because ultimately, the work is of the same nature. Meta, of course, already has existing monetization models but they also have so many arms of the company where AI can and will thrive, hardware and software, and Meta is constantly developing new products both pysical and tech. So for Sam Altman to minimize Meta’s success and money as ‘come work for us because it’ll mean more’ just seems silly to me.

If anything, his message should be ‘why would someone throw $100 million at our employees unless…’ Say less, Sam, say less. For now though, OpenAI has a LONG LONG LONG way to go until they’re realistically in the same conversation at Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. But heavy is the head that wears the crown.