How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went from calling Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring “Exceptional” to slamming it as “Distasteful”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is now blasting Meta‘s aggressive expertise poaching and $100 million signing bonuses, a dramatic reversal from 2016 when he praised Mark Zuckerberg‘s hiring strategy as “exceptional” throughout a YCombinator interview.The irony runs deep: Altman, who was then the President of YCombinator, informed Zuckerberg that “Facebook has carried out exceptionally effectively is hiring” and referred to as it “the thing you have to get good at” as a founder. Today, he is warning OpenAI workers that Meta is “acting in a way that feels somewhat distasteful” as the corporate raids his AI expertise.In a fiery inner Slack message, Altman dismissed Meta’s recruitment success, claiming they “didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list.” He declared that “missionaries will beat mercenaries” whereas hinting at compensation changes throughout OpenAI’s analysis group.The battle intensified after Meta efficiently recruited no less than seven OpenAI researchers for its new superintelligence workforce, with packages reportedly reaching $300 million over 4 years. Altman revealed on his brother’s podcast that Zuckerberg has been “making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” together with “$100 million signing bonuses, more than that compensation per year.”

When Altman praised Zuckerberg’s hiring philosophy

Back in 2016, Zuckerberg had defined his talent-over-experience philosophy to Altman, saying he invested in “people who we think are just really talented, even if they haven’t done that thing before.” The Facebook CEO emphasised creating inner development alternatives, noting that of the corporate’s 12 product teams, all leaders besides one “did not join the company running a product group or reporting to me.”Zuckerberg credited this strategy with preserving “the best people engaged” and attracting high expertise who noticed development alternatives. Altman was clearly impressed, positioning hiring as the crucial founder ability.

Mission over cash: Altman’s present protection technique

Now Altman questions Meta’s innovation DNA fully: “There’s many things I respect about Meta as a company, but I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation.” He argues his workers see OpenAI as having a “much better shot actually, delivering on superintelligence and also may eventually be the more valuable company.”The OpenAI chief attacked Meta’s compensation-first technique, claiming “the degree to which they are focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture.” He emphasised that OpenAI “actually care about building AGI in a good way,” whereas “other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal.”