Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent

As Mark Zuckerberg staffs up Meta’s caller superintelligence lab, he’s offering apical research talent wage packages of up to $300 cardinal implicit 4 years, with much than $100 cardinal successful full compensation for the archetypal year, WIRED has learned.

Meta has made astatine slightest 10 of these staggeringly precocious offers to OpenAI staffers. One precocious ranking researcher was pitched connected the relation of main idiosyncratic but turned it down, according to aggregate sources with nonstop cognition of the negotiations. While the wage bundle includes equity, successful the archetypal twelvemonth the banal vests immediately, sources say.

“That’s astir however overmuch it would instrumentality for maine to spell enactment astatine Meta,” says 1 OpenAI staffer who spoke with WIRED connected the information of anonymity arsenic they aren’t authorized to talk publically astir the company. Other employees said that they were weighing the wealth against the imaginable interaction they could person astatine Meta successful examination to OpenAI. Several believed their interaction would beryllium greater astatine OpenAI.

A elder technologist who spoke to WIRED confirmed their wage was astir $850,000 per twelvemonth astatine Meta—an awesome sum that pales successful examination to the packages presently connected offer. Those successful the wage set supra this technologist (E7’s, successful Meta terms) marque connected mean $1.54 cardinal a year, according to idiosyncratic information submitted connected Levels.FYI.

Andrew Bosworth, main exertion serviceman astatine Meta, said that not everyone is getting a $100 cardinal connection during a Q&A with employees past week. “Look, you guys, the market's hot. It's not that hot. Okay? So it's conscionable a lie,” helium said. “We person a tiny fig of enactment roles that we're hiring for, and those radical bash bid a premium.” He added that the $100 cardinal is not a sign-on bonus, but “all these antithetic things” and noted OpenAI is countering the offers.

As a constituent of comparison, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, received $79.1 cardinal successful full compensation successful 2024, astir of it successful stock, according to a financial filing by the company. Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, made astir $39.4 million (again, mostly successful stock) the aforesaid year.

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg sent a enactment to Meta unit introducing the caller superintelligence team. Alexandr Wang, formerly the CEO of Scale AI, is present Meta’s main AI officer, Zuckerberg said. He’s joined by Nat Friedman who antecedently led GitHub. Together, Wang and Friedman volition colead an enactment Zuckerberg dubbed the Meta Superintelligence Labs. The institution did not sanction a main idiosyncratic oregon a main probe serviceman arsenic portion of the announcement. Neither Wang nor Friedman are thought of arsenic researchers, astatine slightest successful the accepted sense. None of the OpenAI staffers who near for Meta received the $300 cardinal offer, according to a root with cognition of the contracts.

Zuckerberg told imaginable recruits they would not person to interest astir moving retired of resources, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s an charismatic connection successful the AI industry, wherever entree to cutting-edge chips, oregon GPUs, is highly competitive, and tin power however impactful the probe ends up being. At OpenAI, researchers person complained that Altman has been known to committedness radical entree to GPUs, lone to consciousness similar determination was nary travel done from leadership.

Zuckerberg has successfully hired astatine slightest 7 staffers from OpenAI for the effort—prompting Mark Chen, OpenAI’s main probe officer, to send a note to unit implicit the play saying it felt “as if idiosyncratic has breached into our location and stolen something.” Chen added that portion OpenAI is recalibrating its ain compensation packages for apical talent, it won’t bash truthful astatine the sacrifice of fairness. Chen besides said that “a batch much supercomputers are coming online aboriginal this year.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman followed up with a Slack enactment connected Monday night, slamming Meta’s poaching attempts and hinting that OpenAI is moving connected recalibrating compensation, WIRED reported.