On July 30 Beijing Time, according to a report by Wired magazine, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is fully committed to recruiting top AI talents for his newly established super AI laboratory. Although Zuckerberg has successfully lured several top researchers from OpenAI, his new target is the employees of Thinking Machines Lab (TML), founded by Murati.
It is reported that TML currently has 50 employees, but Meta has already contacted more than 12 employees and even offered generous salary proposals. Some offers exceed $1 billion over several years, while others range between $200 million to $500 million paid over four years. Meta even promised that the salary in the first year could reach $50 million to $100 million. However, so far, no one has been willing to accept these tempting offers.
Regarding this, Andy Stone, Meta's communications director, stated in a statement that although some employees have received high salary offers, the details of the report are inaccurate. He questioned the motives behind such reports and emphasized that Meta only extended invitations to a few TML employees.
Zuckerberg's recruitment strategy is quite personal. He initially contacted potential candidates through WhatsApp and then quickly arranged interviews, including long conversations with himself and other executives. Zuckerberg told those invited that Meta hopes to build world-class AI assistants, providing valuable AI services to each user.
Although Meta lags behind some small competitors in building cutting-edge AI models, it plans to weaken OpenAI's market position through an open-source strategy. Meta hopes to commoditize AI technology by releasing competitive open-source models, although this path is full of challenges.
However, why has Meta's high-salary recruitment strategy failed repeatedly? Some insiders revealed that although Zuckerberg has successfully recruited nearly 24 people, the leadership style and team atmosphere have become concerns for many top talents. Additionally, Meta's product roadmap seems not to impress many, especially when compared to the mission of companies like OpenAI.
TML has just completed its largest funding round to date, with a valuation of $12 billion. Researchers do not need to choose between ideals and money. For them, staying at such a promising company is undoubtedly more attractive.