Meta offers $200 million to top AI talent as superintelligence race heats up
A record-breaking offer from Meta highlights how aggressive Silicon Valley’s AI talent war has become.
Meta has reportedly offered over $200 million in compensation to Ruoming Pang, a former senior AI engineer at Apple, as it escalates its bid to dominate the AI arms race.
The offer, which includes long-term stock incentives, far exceeded Apple’s willingness to match and is seen as one of Silicon Valley’s most aggressive poaching efforts.
The move is part of Meta’s broader campaign to build a world-class team under its new Meta Superintelligence Lab (MSL), which is focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The division has already attracted prominent names, including ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI investor Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, who joined as Chief AI Officer through a $14.3 billion stake deal.
Most compensation offers in the MSL reportedly rival CEO packages at global banks, but they are heavily performance-based and tied to long-term equity vesting.
Meta’s mix of base salary, signing bonuses, and high-value stock options is designed to attract and retain elite AI talent amid a fierce talent war with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently claimed Meta has dangled bonuses up to $100 million to lure staff away, though he insists many stayed for cultural reasons.
Still, Meta has already hired more than 10 researchers from OpenAI and poached talent from Google DeepMind, including principal researcher Jack Rae.
The AI rivalry could come to a head as Altman and Zuckerberg meet at the Sun Valley conference this week.
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