Former OpenAI researcher Lucas Beyer pours cold water on $100 million Meta signing bonus
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his brother that Mark Zuckerberg was offering compensation packages worth more than $100 million to lure OpenAI staff to Meta. Altman said he was happy that none of the best minds at OpenAI had gone for the golden ticket so far. On Thursday, three OpenAI researchers who lead the firm’s Zurich office announced they would join Meta.
The trio of OpenAI engineers who co-founded the firm’s Zurich office last year will indeed be leaving to join Meta—but they aren’t getting $100 million apiece to do so.
Lucas Beyer posted on X Thursday that he, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai would depart OpenAI to join the $1.8 trillion company led by Mark Zuckerberg. Beyer said it was “fake news” that Zuckerberg was paying him that level of compensation. However, that news came from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself, who called the offers “crazy” this month.
“They started making these like, giant offers, to a lot of people on our team—$100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year,” Altman told his brother Jack Altman in an episode of the podcast Uncapped. “I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that.”
hey all, couple quick notes:
— Lucas Beyer (bl16) (@giffmana) June 26, 2025
1) yes, we will be joining Meta.
2) no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that's fake news.
Excited about what's ahead though, will share more in due time!
cc @__kolesnikov__ and @XiaohuaZhai.
Beyer, Kolesnikov, and Zhai have been members of the technical staff at OpenAI since December 2024, which they joined after being poached from rival Google DeepMind. They depart for Meta at a time when competition for talent among AI firms is reaching a frenzied pitch, with Zuckerberg reportedly on a recruitment spree to counter the narrative that it is lagging behind in AI development. Reports claim the company is hiring a 50-person “Superintelligence” team to ramp up its AI efforts. Meta has also purchased a $14 billion stake in Scale AI, to bring CEO Alexandr Wang into the fold.
Zuckerberg famously earns only $1 as CEO at Meta, although the company provides him a $14 million allowance for costs related to security for Zuckerberg and his family. He holds about 13% of the tech behemoth’s stock and his fortune is valued at $250 billion by Forbes.
Among the top-paid executives at Meta, chief operating officer Javier Olivan was paid the most last year, with compensation valued at $25.5 million. No other top executive at Meta was paid $100 million in any of the past three years, according to the company’s financial filings.
The median of the total annual compensation of all Meta employees other than Zuckerberg was $417,400 last year.
On X, a commenter speculated that Altman “clearly just threw out the 100m figure out there to make potential takers think that they were being lowballed.”
“Yes, it was a brilliant move, gotta give him that,” posted Beyer in response.
OpenAI and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com