'I'll Fight to Keep Every One of You': OpenAI Responds to Meta Poaching Talent, Says It Is 'Recalibrating' Pay

Meta has reportedly been compiling a list of top talent to poach in the AI talent wars — and OpenAI researchers are on it.

According to recent reports, Meta has successfully poached eight OpenAI staff members in the past two weeks for its AI efforts. Now, OpenAI leadership is reassuring staff that the company is fighting back against Meta in the war for AI talent.

OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen sent a memo to staff on Saturday stating that OpenAI would take steps to counter Meta stealing talent. The memo was sent to employees in Slack and obtained by Wired.

"I have a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something," Chen stated in the memo. "Please trust that we haven't been sitting idly by."

Chen said that he was collaborating with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to talk to employees with competing offers from Meta. Company leadership is "recalibrating" compensation and "scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent" in response to these offers, Chen wrote.

Related: Meta Is Reportedly Offering Up to Nine-Figure Pay for Researchers on Its New Superintelligence AI Team

However, while OpenAI wants to keep its staff, it also wants to keep compensation "fair" among employees.

"While I'll fight to keep every one of you, I won't do so at the price of fairness to others," Chen wrote in the memo.

^{OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images}

Last week, Meta reportedly hired top OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal and three other OpenAI employees who set up the company's Zurich office: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. The Information reported on Saturday that Meta had hired four more OpenAI AI researchers: Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren.

Meta's hiring push is due to the company's focus on a new superintelligence lab. The team will consist of roughly 50 employees who will work closely with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to develop superintelligence, or AI that exceeds human intelligence in reasoning, memory, and knowledge. Zuckerberg reportedly wants Meta to be the first company to achieve superintelligence, with the goal of bringing advanced AI capabilities to Meta's products, like its chatbot and smart glasses.

Related: Meta Is Reportedly Planning to Release New AI Smart Glasses With Oakley and Prada

Zuckerberg has been prepared to compensate new superintelligence employees handsomely. The New York Times reported that the CEO offered potential new hires compensation in the millions.

Altman said earlier this month that Meta was trying to recruit OpenAI researchers with "$100 million" signing bonuses and "more than that" in compensation, but that none of OpenAI's "best people" had taken the offer.

However, Meta leadership has pushed back against Altman's statement. At Meta's leaked all-hands meeting last week, Meta's Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, said that Altman was "being dishonest" about the size and scope of the offers. One of the OpenAI employees Meta poached, Lucas Beyer, also posted on X that he did not receive a $100 million signing bonus.

Meta was up over 23% year to date at the time of writing.