OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta has offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them, as the tech giant seeks to ramp up its artificial intelligence strategy.

Speaking on the ‘Uncapped’ podcast hosted by his brother, Sam Altman said that while Meta had tried to recruit “a lot of people” from OpenAI, “none of our top talent has chosen to leave for them so far” as reported by CNBC.

Reuters reports that the alleged attempts by Meta to hire OpenAI staffers are the latest signs of a frenzy to hire top engineers to develop AI models, and they come at a time when the Facebook owner is working on building its superintelligence unit to catch up with competitors.

Competition for AI talent has reached a feverish pitch as superstar researchers are being courted like professional athletes on the belief that individual contributors can make or break companies.

“They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said on the Uncapped podcast that aired on June 17, hosted by his brother. “You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year.”

“At least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours, and Reuters could not verify the information.

“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman said.

His comments come just days after Meta invested $14.3 billion in data-labeling startup Scale AI, and hired its top boss, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team.

According to CNBC, Alexandr Wang announced last week that he is joining Meta following a deal in which the tech giant acquired a 49% stake in his company.

Wang also noted that a few Scale AI employees will be transitioning to Meta as part of the agreement.

Meta, once recognized as a leader in open-source AI models, has suffered from staff departures and has postponed the launches of new open-source AI models that could rival competitors like Google, China’s DeepSeek and OpenAI.