Meta Offers Multi-Million Dollar Packages, Not $100M Bonuses

Meta is indeed offering substantial multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers when recruiting them for its new superintelligence lab. However, the company has clarified that no one is receiving a $100 million 'signing bonus,' as previously reported.

During a company-wide meeting, leaked to The Verge, Meta’s top executives addressed the bonuses that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed Meta had offered to top researchers. Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, suggested that only a few people in very senior leadership roles may have been offered that kind of money, but clarified that it was not an instant lump sum. Instead, it’s a combination of different components, including restricted stock units (RSUs) tied to tenure or performance metrics.

A four-year total pay package worth about $100 million for a very senior leader is not inconceivable for Meta. Many of Meta’s named officers, including Bosworth, have earned total compensation of between $20 million and nearly $24 million per year for years.

Bosworth emphasized that Altman’s suggestion that Meta is offering such sums to every person is misleading. 'Look, you guys, the market’s hot. It’s not that hot,' he reportedly said.

Researcher Lucas Beyer confirmed he was leaving OpenAI to join Meta, along with the two others who led OpenAI’s Zurich office. Beyer tweeted, '1) yes, we will be joining Meta. 2) no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that’s fake news.' Beyer declined to comment further on his new role to TechCrunch.

Beyer’s expertise in computer vision AI aligns with Meta’s focus on entertainment AI, rather than productivity AI. Meta already has a stake in the AI market with its Quest VR headsets and its Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses.

Meta is still spending big to hire in AI, even if not handing out $100 million willy-nilly. For example, Meta has hired OpenAI’s Trapit Bansal, known for his groundbreaking work on AI reasoning models. He had worked at OpenAI since 2022.

Scale co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang is also getting a significant amount of cash, likely more than $100 million, as part of Meta’s deal to buy 49% ownership of his company. The $14 billion Meta is paying is being distributed to shareholders as a cash dividend, and Wang is almost certainly a major shareholder entitled to those dividends.

While Meta isn’t offering $100 million to everyone, it is still making significant investments in AI talent. One investor told TechCrunch that an AI researcher received and turned down an $18 million job offer from Meta, opting instead for a smaller but still substantial offer from a buzzier AI startup, Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab.