Meta Hires Multiple Ex-OpenAI Researchers, $100M Bonus Claims Denied

Meta and OpenAI are engaged in a heated competition for top AI talent, exemplified by the recent departure of three senior OpenAI researchers—Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—to Meta's newly formed superintelligence team. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed Meta was offering extraordinarily high compensation packages, including $100 million signing bonuses, to lure talent, but Meta executives have strongly denied these claims, stating such offers were made only to a very small number of senior leadership candidates. Beyer himself publicly refuted the $100 million signing bonus rumor, calling it "fake news" and clarifying that none of the trio received such packages. Meta has intensified its AI investments, including a $14.3 billion deal for a stake in Scale AI and recruiting its young CEO Alexandr Wang to bolster its AI efforts. While Altman suggested Meta's aggressive hiring strategy might undermine its culture, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth indicated that their success in attracting OpenAI talent is real, despite the exaggeration of compensation figures. This talent war highlights the escalating rivalry between major AI developers to accelerate advancements toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).