OpenAI is Raising Salaries After Meta Stole Top Talent With Lucrative Offers

OpenAI has responded to a wave of staff departures by pledging to revise its compensation and retention plans. This comes after aggressive recruitment by Meta, which has recently hired several senior researchers from its rival, offering them hundreds of millions. 

Internal Memo Describes Breach of Trust

According to a memo shared on Slack by Chief Research Officer Mark Chen and obtained by Wired, the leadership team, including CEO Sam Altman, has taken the departures personally. “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” Chen wrote, adding that the company is “recalibrating comp[ensation], and … scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent”.

Chen emphasized ongoing 24/7 efforts to negotiate with researchers who received external offers and reassured staff that retaining employees will not come at the expense of internal fairness.

Meta’s Hiring Blitz and Elite Talent Exodus

Meta has shifted into high gear, targeting OpenAI’s leading researchers. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly reached out directly, offering lucrative packages—including signing bonuses of up to $100 million, according to Altman—though Meta executives have disputed those figures

In the past two weeks alone, eight senior OpenAI researchers have accepted positions at Meta, including:

• Lucas Beyer

• Alexander Kolesnikov

• Xiaohua Zhai

• Shengjia Zhao

• Jiahui Yu

• Shuchao Bi

• Hongyu Ren

• Trapit Bansal

Zhao and Bi were key contributors to GPT-4, while others played major roles in OpenAI’s Zurich office.