Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent

As Mark Zuckerberg staffs up Meta’s new superintelligence lab, he’s offered top tier research talent pay packages of up to $300 million over four years, with more than $100 million in total compensation for the first year, WIRED has learned.

Meta has made at least 10 staggeringly high offers to OpenAI staffers, sources say. One high ranking researcher was pitched on the role of chief scientist but turned it down, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations. While the pay package includes equity, in the first year the stock vests immediately, sources say.

“That’s about how much it would take for me to go work at Meta,” says one OpenAI staffer who spoke with WIRED on the condition of anonymity as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the company. Other employees said that they were weighing the money against the potential impact they could have at Meta in comparison to OpenAI. Several believed their impact would be greater at OpenAI.

“These statements are untrue - the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the place,” says Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. “Some people have chosen to greatly exaggerate what’s happening for their own purposes.”

A senior engineer who spoke to WIRED confirmed their pay was around $850,000 per year at Meta—an impressive sum that pales in comparison to the packages currently on offer. Those in the pay band above this engineer (E7’s, in Meta terms) make on average $1.54 million a year, according to user data submitted on Levels.FYI.

Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer at Meta, said that not everyone is getting a $100 million offer during a Q&A with employees last week. “Look, you guys, the market's hot. It's not that hot. Okay? So it's just a lie,” he said. “We have a small number of leadership roles that we're hiring for, and those people do command a premium.” He added that the $100 million is not a sign-on bonus, but “all these different things” and noted OpenAI is countering the offers.

As a point of comparison, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, received $79.1 million in total compensation in 2024, most of it in stock, according to a financial filing by the company. Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, made roughly $39.4 million (again, mostly in stock) the same year.

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg sent a note to Meta staff introducing the new superintelligence team. Alexandr Wang, formerly the CEO of Scale AI, is now Meta’s chief AI officer, Zuckerberg said. He’s joined by Nat Friedman who previously led GitHub. Together, Wang and Friedman will colead an organization Zuckerberg dubbed the Meta Superintelligence Labs. The company did not name a chief scientist or a chief research officer as part of the announcement. Neither Wang nor Friedman are thought of as researchers, at least in the traditional sense. None of the OpenAI staffers who left for Meta received the $300 million offer, according to a source with knowledge of the contracts.

Zuckerberg told potential recruits they would not have to worry about running out of resources, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s an attractive offer in the AI industry, where access to cutting-edge chips, or GPUs, is highly competitive, and can influence how impactful the research ends up being. At OpenAI, researchers have complained that Altman has been known to promise people access to GPUs, only to feel like there was no follow through from leadership.

Zuckerberg has successfully hired at least seven staffers from OpenAI for the effort—prompting Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, to send a note to staff over the weekend saying it felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.” Chen added that while OpenAI is recalibrating its own compensation packages for top talent, it won’t do so at the sacrifice of fairness. Chen also said that “a lot more supercomputers are coming online later this year.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman followed up with a Slack note on Monday night, slamming Meta’s poaching attempts and hinting that OpenAI is working on recalibrating compensation, WIRED reported.