OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has claimed that Meta offered massive financial incentives, including signing bonuses of up to $100 million, to recruit top talent from his company as competition intensifies in the artificial intelligence sector.

Speaking on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother, Altman said the Facebook parent company has approached several OpenAI engineers with eye-popping compensation packages.

“They started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team,” Altman said. “You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that in compensation per year.”

The comments come amid an escalating race among tech giants to secure elite AI researchers, with companies treating leading talent like high-value athletes capable of making or breaking the future of AI innovation.

Altman noted that, so far, none of OpenAI’s “best people” have accepted the offers.

Meta, which has recently ramped up investment in artificial intelligence, did not respond to requests for comment as of press time, and Reuters was unable to independently verify the claims.

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

The remarks come just days after Meta announced a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, a data-labeling company, and appointed its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a new superintelligence division within Meta.

Although Meta has historically been a leader in open-source AI research, it has faced internal shakeups in recent months, including high-profile staff departures and delays in launching key models.

As the global AI arms race intensifies, tech companies continue to compete aggressively for scarce talent to drive breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence and other emerging technologies.