Open AI’s Sam Altman accuses Mark Zuckerberg of trying to steal his employees with $100M bonuses

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has revealed that Mark Zuckerberg may have tried to lure some of his employees with bonuses of up to several million dollars, in a bid to recruit them for the “superintelligent” AI project that Meta recently unveiled.

OpenAI boss accuses Meta of trying to poach staff with $100m sign-on bonuses

— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) 2025-06-18T13:37:14.850Z

In a discussion on the future of AI on the podcast hosted by his brother Jack Altman, Sam Altman pointed out that the race to develop artificial intelligence had, in his opinion, taken a turn completely out of proportion.

In particular, he cited Meta’s recent attempt to poach some of its key employees by offering them gigantic bonuses of up to $100 million.

He took the opportunity to openly denounce this approach, warning that such a recruitment method could foster a toxic culture in an under-pressure, fast-growing technology sector.

Altman says he is fortunate that none of his employees appear, so far, to have given in to Meta’s offers.

While Zuckerberg is deploying considerable resources, from huge investments to offensive recruitment, to catch up in the AI race with his “superintelligence” project, Altman adopts a more measured stance: in his opinion, the real impact of AI may well not justify the scale of the investments involved.