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Many companies offer attractive pay packages to rival company employees in a bid to get them to jump ship, but few in the tech world can match what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has proposed to current OpenAI workers.
With a heavy focus on artificial intelligence in the tech world right now, many of the biggest companies are trying to secure the best talent possible in order to get ahead of the curve.
We have already seen how offering the best possible product early on can provide a remarkable influx of users, as OpenAI's ChatGPT has dominated the AI space since the model was first released to the public in late 2022.
We're still in the relative infancy of AI technology though, and major players like Google, Apple, and Meta are all trying to assert their dominance and have their respective AI model become equivalent to the iPhone in the smartphone world.
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Outside of general product enhancements and updates though, Meta is taking an aggressive stance when it comes to staff acquisition, and is reportedly offering eye-watering sums to convince OpenAI workers to join his team.
As reported by WIRED, Zuckerberg and Meta are offering as much as $300,000,000 across a four year period to key OpenAI staff, with over $100,000,000 of that offered within the first year alone.
Understandably this doesn't apply to every employee in Sam Altman's nonprofit company, as sources indicate that only around 10 offers have been made so far - but some have even turned them down.
One high ranking researcher apparently wasn't convinced, and others remain concerned about the impact that they could have at Meta compared to the work they are already doing at OpenAI.
Speaking anonymously to WIRED, one OpenAI staffer revealed that the aforementioned figures would be "about how much it would take for me to go work at Meta," showing quite how much money is generally floated at the apex of the tech world right now.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone has denied these reports, however, revealing that "these statements are untrue - the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the place." Stone continued to add that "some people have chosen to greatly exaggerate what's happening for their own purposes."
Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth has also cast doubt on the claims in a recent employee Q&A, illustrating that "the market's hot, it's not that hot, okay?" He did hint that there are a small number of leadership roles currently open at Meta, and these "do command a premium," so perhaps that lines up more with the numbers being thrown around.
OpenAI are rightfully not too happy that Meta is attempting to poach its best staff with these jaw-dropping compensation packages, and Mark Chen, the company's chief research officer, revealed in a recent staff note that it was "as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something."
Bosworth did indicate during the Q&A that OpenAI is actively countering offers that Meta has proposed to its staff, and Sam Altman has allegedly slammed Meta's attempts, and hinted that OpenAI will be 'recalibrating' compensation for its existing workers.
