Meta is certainly providing hefty multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers when wooing them to its new superintelligence lab. However nobody is admittedly getting a $100 million “signing bonus,” based on a poached researcher and feedback from a leaked inside assembly.
Throughout a company-wide all-hands assembly on Thursday leaked to The Verge, a few of Meta’s high executives have been requested concerning the bonuses that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned Meta had supplied to high researchers.
Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth implied that just a few folks for very senior management roles could have been supplied that type of cash, however clarified “the precise phrases of the supply” wasn’t a “sign-on bonus. It’s all these various things.” In different phrases, not an on the spot chunk of money. Tech firms sometimes supply the most important chunks of their pay to senior leaders in restricted inventory unit (RSU) grants, depending on both tenure or efficiency metrics.
A four-year complete pay bundle value about $100 million for a really senior chief is just not inconceivable for Meta. Most of Meta’s named officers, together with Bosworth, have earned complete compensation of between $20 million and almost $24 million per 12 months for years.
Altman was “suggesting that we’re doing this for each single particular person,” Bosworth reportedly mentioned on the assembly. “Look, you guys, the market’s scorching. It’s not that scorching.” (Meta didn’t instantly reply to our request for remark.)
On Thursday, researcher Lucas Beyer confirmed he was leaving OpenAI to hitch Meta together with the 2 others who led OpenAI’s Zurich workplace. He tweeted: “1) sure, we might be becoming a member of Meta. 2) no, we didn’t get 100M sign-on, that’s pretend information.” (Beyer politely declined to remark additional on his new position to TechCrunch.)
Beyer’s experience is in pc imaginative and prescient AI. That aligns with what Meta is pursuing: leisure AI, relatively than productiveness AI, Bosworth reportedly mentioned in that assembly. Meta already has a stake within the floor in that space with its Quest VR headsets and its Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses.
Nonetheless, among the folks Meta is attempting to nab are certainly worthy of massive pay packages on this tight AI expertise market. As TechCrunch was first to report, Meta has employed OpenAI’s Trapit Bansal, recognized for his groundbreaking work on AI reasoning fashions. He had labored at OpenAI since 2022.
Definitely, Scale co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang is getting a wholesome chunk of money, doubtless greater than $100 million, as a part of Meta’s deal to purchase 49% possession of his firm. As we beforehand reported, the $14 billion Meta is paying is being distributed to shareholders as a money dividend. Wang is nearly definitely a serious shareholder in Scale entitled to these dividends.
Nonetheless, whereas Meta isn’t handing out $100 million willy-nilly, it’s nonetheless spending large to rent in AI.
One investor instructed TechCrunch that he noticed an AI researcher get — and switch down — an $18 million job supply from Meta. That particular person took a smaller, however nonetheless wholesome supply, from a buzzier AI startup: Mira Murati’s Pondering Machines Lab.
