OpenAI CEO Sam Altman opened up for the first time publicly regarding Meta’s aggressive recruitment of his top AI researchers. Replying with a brief “fine” and “good” when asked about the talent battle with Mark Zuckerberg, Altman said he hasn’t spoken to the Meta CEO since the poaching began.“We have, obviously an incredibly talented team, and I think they really love what they are doing. Obviously, some people will go to different places,” Altman told reporters at the Sun Valley conference. “There’s a lot of excitement, I guess you could say, in the industry. But no, I think we feel fine.”Altman’s measured public tone contrasts sharply with his more combative internal messaging to OpenAI employees. In a fiery Slack message obtained earlier, he dismissed Meta’s recruitment success, claiming they “didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list.” He declared that “missionaries will beat mercenaries” while hinting at compensation adjustments across OpenAI’s research organization.
Zuckerberg poached at least half a dozen OpenAI researchers for his Superintelligence Labs
The comments come after Meta successfully recruited at least seven OpenAI researchers for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs, including key contributors to OpenAI’s reasoning models. Altman previously revealed on his brother’s podcast that Zuckerberg had been “making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” including “$100 million signing bonuses.”However, former OpenAI researcher Lucas Beyer, who joined Meta’s superintelligence team, publicly disputed the $100 million figure as “fake news,” suggesting Altman may have exaggerated the compensation packages.When asked about retaining talent, Altman emphasized OpenAI’s mission-driven approach: “having a great mission, really talented people and trying to build a great research lab and a great company, too.” Even the two hasn’t spoken since in a while, but Altman’s “looking forward” to seeing him at the conference.