Mark Zuckerberg is making bold moves to position Meta at the forefront of artificial intelligence by aggressively hiring top AI researchers with eye-popping pay offers. Reports suggest Meta has offered packages worth up to $300 million over four years to lure leading minds, particularly from rival firms like OpenAI, as it races to build its new “superintelligence” team and compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Wired reported that some of these offers included over $100 million in compensation in the first year alone, with packages structured to include immediate stock vesting, a significant draw in Silicon Valley’s competitive hiring environment. These efforts align with Meta’s ambitions to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) under its newly announced Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).

The Push for Superintelligence Leadership

At a recent company-wide meeting, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth acknowledged the buzz around the rumored massive pay packages but clarified that such high figures were only for a select few senior leadership positions. “The market’s hot. It’s not that hot,” he remarked, emphasizing that the compensation structures being discussed publicly were not sign-on bonuses but a mix of stocks, benefits, and other incentives, which had been misrepresented in public discourse.

Meta’s aggressive recruitment campaign has particularly targeted OpenAI, with reports of at least 10 staffers from the rival company receiving offers. While some researchers described the offers as tempting, others dismissed the reported figures as exaggerated. A Meta spokesperson reinforced this, stating that certain individuals were inflating numbers for personal reasons. Despite the disputes over figures, it is evident that Meta’s compensation packages remain highly competitive, with a senior engineer reportedly earning around $850,000 annually.

Mark Zuckerberg confirmed Meta’s ambitions in an internal note to employees, announcing the launch of MSL to drive the company’s AGI goals. Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, has joined Meta as its first chief AI officer and will co-lead MSL alongside Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO. This team is tasked with advancing Meta’s large language model capabilities, an area where the company is striving to match the progress made by OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Rivalries and Tensions in the AI Race

Meta’s recruitment drive has rattled OpenAI, with its chief research officer Mark Chen reportedly telling staff it felt like “someone has broken into our home and stolen something.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also commented that while Meta had attempted to lure his team with offers of “$100 million signing bonuses,” none of their top talent had accepted these offers.

Bosworth responded sharply during Meta’s internal meeting, accusing Altman of exaggeration and dishonesty while claiming that Meta’s strategy was succeeding in attracting talent from OpenAI. The intense rivalry underscores the high stakes of the AI race, as tech giants scramble to secure top talent amid the growing significance of AI in shaping the future of technology and commerce.

Despite public denials from some hires, including Lucas Beyer and Alexander Kolesnikov, regarding receiving $100 million offers, the underlying message from Mark Zuckerberg remains clear: Meta is prepared to invest heavily in both talent and compute resources to ensure it does not fall behind in the superintelligence race. The company has also assured recruits of ample access to cutting-edge chips and computing power, a critical factor for researchers frustrated by resource constraints at other firms.

In building out this AI powerhouse, Meta has hired at least 11 prominent researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, including Trapit Bansal, co-creator of OpenAI’s o-series models, and Shuchao Bi, known for GPT-4o voice work. This team will lead Meta’s charge in developing the next generation of AI models, reinforcing Mark Zuckerberg’s broader vision of transforming Meta into a leader in artificial general intelligence while signaling that the battle for top AI talent is only intensifying.

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