Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of OpenAI, claimed on the 17th (local time) that competitor Meta offered bonuses of up to $100 million (approximately 137 billion won) to attract the company's key talents.
According to TechCrunch, CEO Altman recently appeared on his brother's podcast, Uncapped, and said, "Meta has tried to poach OpenAI employees en masse, but none of our top talents have accepted their offers so far." He also assessed that the competitor Meta "struggles with innovation." This is interpreted as a counterstatement as Meta recently invested $14.3 billion (approximately 19.6 trillion won) to strengthen its AI division.
CEO Altman noted, "The $100 million is a signing bonus, which means it is more when calculated as an annual salary," and added, "It seems that Meta perceives us as their biggest competitor."
In fact, Meta reportedly tried to recruit Noam Brown, a senior researcher at OpenAI, and Koray Kabukcuoglu, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Google DeepMind, but was unsuccessful.
CEO Altman stated, "Employees seem to have evaluated that OpenAI has a higher likelihood of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) and could become a more valuable company someday," and added, "I respect the corporation known as Meta, but I do not consider it an innovative company."
He pointed out, "If the focus is on high compensation packages for employees rather than the mission of providing AGI, it will not create a great corporate culture."
He further stated, "Although Meta's AI projects have not yet delivered as expected, I respect their continued challenges and new attempts."