OpenAI scrambling to «recalibrate comp» as Meta poaches top talent

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on an unprecedented hiring spree for top AI talent, having recently bought half of Scale AI, hired the CEO at Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintellingence, and now hiring seven engineers from OpenAI — just last week.

Sam Altman recently said that Meta was offering as much as $100 million in signing bonuses, but none of his best researchers had fled — at the time.

— Broke into our house
Now Meta has hired four more top engineers, who were crucial to efforts on their top o3 and 04 models, after hiring another three from OpenAIs Zürich office last week, and it seems to have taken a toll on the company’s leadership:

— I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something, wrote Mark Chen, chief research officer at OpenAI in a message staff on Saturday, as seen by Wired.

— Please trust that we haven’t been sitting idly by, he continues.

Won’t cross fairness lines
Chen says in the Slack message shown to Wired that they are scrambling to keep those with Meta offers, and are «recalibrating comp[ensation], and scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent»

This should not affect Chen’s «personal standards of fairness,» and he says he wont cross certain lines related to it in order to keep some talent.

The memo also included encouragements from lower level staff to inform leadership if they have received a Meta offer, presumably so OpenAI gets a chance to counter it.

Read more: Wired scoops the memo, and on hirings. A lot on Zuckerberg’s hiring spree in Tag: Meta.