The trio of OpenAI engineers who co-founded the agency’s Zurich workplace final 12 months will certainly be leaving to hitch Meta—however they aren’t getting $100 million apiece to take action.
Lucas Beyer posted on X Thursday that he, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai would depart OpenAI to hitch the $1.8 trillion firm led by Mark Zuckerberg. Beyer mentioned it was “faux information” that Zuckerberg was paying him that stage of compensation. Nevertheless, that information got here from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself, who referred to as the presents “loopy” this month.
“They began making these like, large presents, to lots of people on our workforce—$100 million signing bonuses, greater than that comp per 12 months,” Altman advised his brother Jack Altman in an episode of the podcast Uncapped. “I’m actually joyful that, at the very least up to now, none of our greatest individuals have determined to take him up on that.”
hey all, couple fast notes:
1) sure, we can be becoming a member of Meta.
2) no, we didn’t get 100M sign-on, that is faux information.Enthusiastic about what’s forward although, will share extra in due time!
cc @__kolesnikov__ and @XiaohuaZhai.— Lucas Beyer (bl16) (@giffmana) June 26, 2025
Beyer, Kolesnikov, and Zhai have been members of the technical employees at OpenAI since December 2024, which they joined after being poached from rival Google DeepMind. They depart for Meta at a time when competitors for expertise amongst AI corporations is reaching a frenzied pitch, with Zuckerberg reportedly on a recruitment spree to counter the narrative that it’s lagging behind in AI growth. Studies declare the corporate is hiring a 50-person “Superintelligence” workforce to ramp up its AI efforts. Meta has additionally bought a $14 billion stake in Scale AI, to deliver CEO Alexandr Wang into the fold.
Zuckerberg famously earns solely $1 as CEO at Meta, though the corporate supplies him a $14 million allowance for prices associated to safety for Zuckerberg and his household. He holds about 13% of the tech behemoth’s inventory and his fortune is valued at $250 billion by Forbes.
Among the many top-paid executives at Meta, chief working officer Javier Olivan was paid essentially the most final 12 months, with compensation valued at $25.5 million. No different prime govt at Meta was paid $100 million in any of the previous three years, in response to the corporate’s monetary filings.
The median of the entire annual compensation of all Meta staff aside from Zuckerberg was $417,400 final 12 months.
On X, a commenter speculated that Altman “clearly simply threw out the 100m determine on the market to make potential takers assume that they had been being lowballed.”
“Sure, it was a superb transfer, gotta give him that,” posted Beyer in response.
OpenAI and Meta didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
