4 years, 300 million, 100 million in the first year! Zuckerberg's "poaching check" shocks the AI circle

Meta is engaging in a talent war in the AI field with unprecedented compensation levels.

According to the latest report from WIRED magazine, Mark Zuckerberg has offered top research talents a four-year compensation package of up to $300 million (approximately RMB 2.18 billion) as he recruits for the newly established Meta Super Intelligence Lab, with the total compensation for the first year exceeding $100 million (approximately RMB 727 million).

Insiders revealed that Meta has extended at least ten jaw-dropping offers to OpenAI employees. Meta attempted to poach a senior researcher for the position of chief scientist but was rejected. Sources indicated that while the compensation package includes equity, the stock for the first year vests immediately (i.e., it can be cashed out right away).

"This offer might actually persuade me to work at Meta," one OpenAI employee privately stated. Other employees mentioned that they are weighing the importance of money against the potential influence they could have at Meta, compared to staying at OpenAI. Some believe they can have a greater impact at OpenAI.

Image generated by AI, prompt: Zuckerberg, throwing money

Zuckerberg poaches seven employees, intense reactions within OpenAI

Reports indicate that Zuckerberg has successfully poached at least seven employees from OpenAI. This prompted OpenAI's Chief Research Officer Mark Chen to urgently email employees over the weekend, stating it feels "like someone smashed our home and stole things."

Chen noted that while OpenAI is readjusting the compensation packages for top talents, it will not do so at the expense of fairness.

CEO Sam Altman further condemned Meta's poaching tactics in a recent internal letter, calling them "disgusting" and suggesting that such poaching methods could lead to deep-seated cultural issues, while hinting at adjustments to OpenAI's compensation structure to retain talent.

Altman stated that although Meta has poached some excellent talents, overall it has failed to attract top talents and "has to settle for less." He also revealed that he has lost count of how many people Zuckerberg wanted to poach from OpenAI for the chief scientist position, criticizing that "there will always be some people who are only in it for the money."

Meta spokesperson denies compensation rumors

However, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone questioned the compensation reports, stating:

These claims are inaccurate— the scale and structure of these compensation packages have been severely distorted everywhere... Some people choose to exaggerate the facts for their own purposes.

A senior engineer confirmed that their annual salary at Meta is approximately $850,000 (approximately RMB 6.18 million)—a considerable figure, but dwarfed by the current exorbitant offers. According to user data from Levels.FYI, employees at the E7 level, which is above this engineer in Meta's job hierarchy, have an average annual salary of about $1.54 million (approximately RMB 11.2 million) Meta's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth clarified in last week's employee Q&A that not everyone can receive a $100 million offer.

Listen, everyone, the market is hot, but it's not that hot, okay? So this is purely a lie... We are hiring for a few leadership positions, and those people can indeed receive high premiums.

He added that the $100 million is not a signing bonus but rather "a sum of various different projects," and pointed out that OpenAI is also taking countermeasures to raise offers to retain talent.

Super Intelligence Lab Layout Begins to Take Shape

On Monday, Zuckerberg sent an internal letter to Meta employees officially introducing the newly established Super Intelligence team. Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, is now serving as Meta's Chief AI Officer, co-leading the new organization called "Meta Super Intelligence Lab" with former GitHub head Nat Friedman.

Notably, the lab has yet to appoint a Chief Scientist or Chief Research Officer. Wang and Friedman do not come from a traditional research background. According to insiders, none of the researchers who left OpenAI to join Meta received the top salary package of $300 million.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg promised potential recruits that they need not worry about resource shortages. In the AI industry, the competition for access to cutting-edge chips or GPUs is fierce, which directly impacts the influence of research outcomes. In contrast, OpenAI researchers have complained that Altman often promises to provide GPU resources, but the leadership lacks follow-up