Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has ignited Silicon Valley’s aggressive artificial intelligence talent war through its billion-dollar hiring spree, prompting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to welcome the competition with a defiant “bring it on” response.
What Happened: During a recent podcast interview, Altman addressed accusations that Meta’s recruitment tactics resembled “mafioso” moves, as noted by host Theo Von, who mentioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s alleged poaching of tech talent across San Francisco.
“I mean, you know, they want to get into the AI game. I understand it. So, and if he’s going to do this, he needs to hire some people. So, bring it,” Altman said, adding, “winning is fun. And I expect to win.”
Meta’s aggressive strategy centers on its newly formed Superintelligence Labs, launched in June under former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. The division consolidates Meta’s Llama models and FAIR research to pursue artificial general intelligence.
Why It Matters: The social media giant has reportedly offered compensation packages reaching $20 million annually to lure top researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Notable acquisitions include Apple’s former Foundation Models head Ruoming Pang, who joined with a reported multimillion-dollar package, and seven OpenAI researchers specializing in large language models.
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