The Artificial Intelligence (AI) race is heating up as tensions rise between Meta and OpenAI over retaining top talent. The Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant has poached many of the top research talent at the ChatGPT maker with lucrative offers and is still looking for more, if reports are to be believed.
According to a report by Wired, OpenAI’s Mark Chen has now responded to the challenge posed by Meta in a new memo that he sent to employees on Saturday.
“I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” Chen wrote in his memo.
“Please trust that we haven’t been sitting idly by,” he added.
Notably, Zuckerberg has been aggressive with his new hiring approach for an AI team, offering even $100 million signing bonuses to some OpenAI employees—if comments made by Altman on his brother’s podcast are to be believed.
Moreover, the Meta chief executive has also been personally reaching out to potential recruits as he sets his sights on building a new AI ‘superintelligence’ team after the latest Llama models failed to gain traction compared to rivals.
Meta has reportedly been ramping up research recruiting with an eye on talent from OpenAI and Google. While Anthropic is also a major rival for the company in the AI race, it is thought to be less of a culture fit at Meta.
OpenAI’s response to Meta offers:
“Over the past month, Meta has been aggressively building out their new AI effort, and has repeatedly (and mostly unsuccessfully) tried to recruit some of our strongest talent with comp-focused packages,” Chen wrote in a message on Slack.
Chen noted that he has been working with Sam Altman and other leaders at the company “to talk to those with offers.”
“We’ve been more proactive than ever before, we’re recalibrating comp, and we’re scoping out creative ways to recognise and reward top talent,” he added.
The Wired report states that OpenAI staff have been grappling with an intense workload as many employees work 80 hours per week while the company focuses on buzzy announcements every few months. The AI startup is largely shutting down next week to give employees time to recharge, but it knows Meta might use this time to poach its top talent.
“Meta knows we’re taking this week to recharge and will take advantage of it to try and pressure you to make decisions fast and in isolation,” another OpenAI leader wrote, as per Chen’s memo.
