The $100m AI talent war. And what Sam Altman didn't tell his brother

The AI talent tug-of-war just turned up the heat.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman recently described Meta’s reported $100 million signing bonuses for his engineers as “crazy,” noting in an interview on his brother’s podcast that none of OpenAI’s top people had jumped ship.

What he didn’t mention, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth tells CNBC, is that OpenAI has been countering those very offers to retain its leading researchers.

Speaking on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime,” Bosworth said the frenzy around AI hires has pushed compensation to unprecedented levels. He attributes the premium to a small cadre of pioneers who, half a decade ago, invested their careers in a then-unproven field.

“The market is setting a rate here for a level of talent which is really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive,” he remarked.

Meta’s aggressive pursuit of AI expertise extends beyond signing bonuses.

On June 12, the company announced a $14.8 billion deal to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI, a data-annotation firm, moves many observers view as an expensive acquihire for CEO Alexandr Wang and his team.

As Bosworth sees it, these eye-watering packages will ultimately encourage more engineers to specialize in AI, expanding the talent pool over the next few years.

For now, however, the number of researchers commanding such sky-high offers remains small.

Both Meta and OpenAI have declined further comment, but one thing is clear: with rival titans trading seven- and eight-figure contracts, the race for artificial-intelligence talent shows no signs of slowing.