Meta's poaching attempt on OpenAI failed, with a signing bonus of up to 100 million dollars still not attracting talent.

The competition in the field of artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly fierce, with the two Silicon Valley giants OpenAI and Meta recently sparking a storm of discussion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta is actively poaching members of their core team with extremely attractive salaries and signing bonuses, with some signing bonuses reaching as high as 100 million dollars. However, Altman stated that so far, no "top talent" has accepted Meta's invitation.

Meta has offered over a hundred million dollars in signing bonuses, but cannot poach OpenAI's core employees.

In the podcast "Uncapped" hosted by Altman and his brother, he candidly stated that Meta is attempting to recruit a large number of OpenAI employees, offering conditions that include extremely high signing bonuses and total salaries, but so far no one has made the switch. He pointed out: "I've heard that Meta views us as their biggest competitor, and their AI progress is not as expected, but I respect their willingness to keep trying and innovating."

Zuckerberg personally takes charge, creating a "superintelligent" AI laboratory.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Meta has recently delayed the release of its latest flagship AI model due to concerns that its actual performance does not meet expectations. To bridge the gap, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally recruiting talent in hopes of assembling an elite AI team to drive the development of its "superintelligence" lab. Meta's AI research division is actively developing the open-source large language model Llama series, which has become a key part of its AI ambitions.

Investing heavily in Scale AI, Meta acquires 49% equity.

Recently, Meta has acquired nearly half of the shares of the AI startup Scale AI for $14.3 billion. As part of the deal, the company's founder, Alexandr Wang, will join Meta and lead a small portion of the original team. The outside world believes that Wang will become one of the key figures leading Meta's research and development of "superintelligent" AI.

In addition to Scale AI, Meta has also successfully recruited Jack Rae, the chief researcher of Google DeepMind. According to a report by Bloomberg, Zuckerberg is personally involved in these recruitment efforts, demonstrating Meta's determination to spare no cost in the battle for AI talent.

Altman: Spending money can buy talent, but it cannot buy an innovative culture.

Facing Meta's lavish spending to poach talent, Altman candidly expressed on the show that he doesn’t favor this kind of recruiting strategy that offers a large signing bonus upfront. He pointed out: "This approach distracts people from their passion for the actual work and fails to establish a successful culture of innovation."

He added: "Many companies, including Meta, seem to just want to replicate OpenAI's approach, but that usually doesn't work. You are always just chasing your competitor's past and cannot truly establish your own innovative system."

The talent war in the AI industry is heating up, and OpenAI is not holding back.

In fact, in this talent war, OpenAI is not to be underestimated either. Last month, the company acquired the AI device startup io, founded by former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive, in an all-stock deal worth $6.4 billion and invited him to join OpenAI, demonstrating that even as a pioneer, it needs to continuously strengthen its creativity and implementation capabilities.

Experts have polarized views: Meta still holds a place in open-source AI.

Despite doubts from the outside regarding Meta's AI performance, Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman holds a different view. In the CNBC program "Power Lunch," he stated, "Much of the development of AI is built on the open-source foundation created by Meta; they are the pioneers of open-source AI."

The open-source Llama language model from Meta is widely used in third-party applications, which has also secured the company's position in the landscape of AI development.

Newman also pointed out that Meta's huge investments in companies like Scale AI will continue to strengthen its advantage in training large AI models.

This article discusses how Meta's attempt to poach talent from OpenAI has failed, with signing bonuses reaching up to 100 million dollars but still unable to attract candidates. It first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.