Yesterday, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) was officially announced by Meta, which will be the “brains” of Mark Zuckerberg’s company’s future artificial intelligence (AI) development. Today, Wired reported that Zuckerberg is offering up to $300 million (~RM 1.26 billion) to the world’s best AI researchers to move to Meta.
More than 10 individuals are believed to have accepted this golden offer, with $300 million being a stipend given over 4 years, but $100 million will be received in the first year. This is in line with the statement made by Sam Altman who said that OpenAI employees were lured with hundreds of millions in compensation to move to Meta.
Among the AI researchers at OpenAI who moved is Shengjia Zhao, who is the co-creator of ChatGPT. Also successfully lured from OpenAI are the creators of the o3/o4-mini, GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.5, 4o-imagegen, GPT-4o voice mode and o4-mini models. Zuckerberg has long used large bonuses and buyouts to close the gap with his competitors.
Also reported by Wired, Sam Altman issued a memo to OpenAI employees saying that “missionaries will beat mercenaries” in the AI race. OpenAI is currently in the process of changing its compensation structure to prevent employees from leaving to other companies.