OpenAI Boosts Salaries Amid Meta’s Aggressive Talent Poaching

OpenAI is taking decisive action to counter a recent wave of staff departures triggered by Meta’s aggressive recruitment efforts.

Following the loss of several senior researchers to its rival, OpenAI has committed to revising its compensation and retention strategies to better reward and retain top talent.

In an internal memo shared on Slack and obtained by Wired, Chief Research Officer Mark Chen expressed deep frustration over the departures, likening it to “someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”

Chen assured employees that OpenAI is “recalibrating compensation” and exploring “creative ways to recognize and reward top talent,” while emphasizing the company’s commitment to fairness in these efforts.

Meta’s Lucrative Hiring Campaign

Meta has intensified its recruitment campaign targeting OpenAI’s elite researchers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly reached out personally with highly attractive offers, including signing bonuses rumored to be as high as $100 million, a figure Meta executives have publicly contested.

Within just two weeks, eight senior OpenAI researchers accepted positions at Meta. This group includes notable names such as Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, Xiaohua Zhai, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Hongyu Ren, and Trapit Bansal. Among them, Zhao and Bi significantly contributed to the development of GPT-4, and several others were key players in OpenAI’s Zurich office.

CEO Sam Altman and the OpenAI leadership team are personally affected by the departures. They have been working around the clock to negotiate with employees who have received external offers, aiming to retain as many top researchers as possible without compromising internal equity.

This talent war highlights the intense competition among AI leaders and raises questions about how companies will balance lucrative offers with sustaining collaborative and fair workplace environments.