The AI Talent War has heated up between large technology companies because they compete for an increasingly small group of Elite -KI researchers. According to Sam Altman, CEO of Openaai, Meta has aggressively registered the top engineers of the company-and the eye hut and bonuses of several million dollars.
Altman said on one Episode of Unpacked This meta had made “many people in our team” huge offers “, some with a total of” 100 million US dollars that sign bonuses and more than this (in) compensation per year. ”
It is the latest example of the intensive competition for top talents and the length that companies are willing to recruit and keep them.
Meta is currently particularly committed to the AI recruitment trip. The company has lost some of its top AI researchers in recent years and is currently fighting against a story that has fallen back in the AI race according to the latest Lama 3 model after it has received a lukewarm reaction from developers.
Zuckerberg has kicked this in Overdrive and reported to the CEO to personally recruit at Meta for a new AI team of 50 people. Meta recently also invested up to $ 15 billion for 49% participation in the training data company Scaleai to commission the CEO of the Alexandr Wang company.
While Altman said that none of his best people decided to accept Mark Zuckerberg’s generous offer, Meta managed to lure other prominent AI researchers.
According to BloombergMeta also has Jack Rae, a main researcher Google DeepmindFor the team and raised Johan Schalkwyk, a mechanical learning manager from the AI Voice Startup Sesame AI. Meta was reportedly unsuccessful in his efforts to poach Top Openaai researcher Noam Brown, and The AI architects from Google, Koray Kavukcuoglu.
According to Signalfire’s recently, Meta is due to a retention rate of 64%with a retention rate of 64%that have recently been published 2025 report on the status of the talent. At Buzzy Ai Startup Anthropic, 80% of the employees hired at least two years ago are still in the company, an impressive number in an industry that is known for their high sales.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a recently carried out request for comments from Assets, manufactured before the normal working hours of the company.
Ki talent gap
Zuckerberg’s salary offers reach the pro-athlete threshold, which as Fortune’s Sharon Goldman notesWill be for the course in the par.
Deedy that, a VC at Menlo Ventures, told beforehand Assets That he heard of several people who tried to recruit the CEO of Meta. “Zuck had telephone calls with potential attitudes that tried to convince them to connect with a floor of $ 2 million/year.”
While Meta may make headlines, it is not the only company that makes extreme efforts to keep and recruit this talent. According to reports, Google Deepmind reports six to 12 months of non-competitive clauses that prevent some AI researchers from joining competitors-and to pay full salaries, even if they fail.
In Openaai, the company is to be rumored that it offers a sky-high compensation to keep talents, and the top researchers earn over $ 10 million annually. According to Reuters, the company has offered more than 2 million dollars of retention bonuses and equity packages of more than 20 million US dollars to hold defects in Ilya Sutskevers new company, SSI.
While Elite -Ki -Labor work over time to block top talents, the full image for AI engineers, especially junior talents, is not quite as rosy. Several current reports, including signalfire’s 2025 report on the status of the talentPresent have suggested that the hiring of the beginners collapse in the tech industry.
According to the report, the setting for roles at the middle and older level was returned from the 2023 slump, but the cuts for new graduates have just come back. Among the large technology companies, new graduates make up only 7% of employees, which decreased by 25% in 2023 and over 50% compared to pre-pandemic in 2019. In start-ups, new graduates make up less than 6% of new employees by 11%, compared to over 30% compared to the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
