Meta’s compensation packages often include base salary, large signing bonuses, and stock tied to performance and long-term vesting.
Apple chose not to match Meta’s offer, which surpasses typical executive pay levels.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed Meta’s high-value recruitment efforts but noted most employees remain at OpenAI due to culture and innovation.
Meta has been making headlines for a while now for poaching talent by offering unusually high salaries to build its dream AI team. According to Bloomberg, Meta has been offering packages that exceed $200 million as it builds a superintelligence team. Among the candidates is Ruoming Pang, a former distinguished engineer at Apple who oversaw the company’s AI models team. According to the report, Pang’s compensation totals hundreds of millions of dollars over several years, with a large portion tied to performance metrics and long-term stock vesting.
SurveyThe reports added that Apple has chosen not to counter Meta’s offer, which exceeds typical executive-level compensation. The hire adds to a growing list of high-profile names joining Meta’s AI efforts, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, the latter appointed as Meta’s Chief AI Officer through a 49% stake acquisition in his company worth $14.3 billion.
It should be noted that Meta has not addressed the compensation structure. According to a report citing sources, the salary structure includes a base salary, significant signing bonuses, and a large stock component. Some also receive signing bonuses, which are intended to offset equity losses when candidates leave their own startups. Stock awards are frequently tied to Meta’s market performance, with vesting periods that exceed the standard four years.
The details emerged when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently acknowledged Meta’s aggressive recruitment tactics, claiming that some of his employees were offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million. He later stated that the majority of employees chose to stay at OpenAI because of its internal culture and innovation.
Meanwhile, Meta continues to aggressively hire. The company has hired more than ten OpenAI researchers, as well as talent from Google, Anthropic, and other AI startups. Mark Zuckerberg previously made headlines when Meta attempted to buy Safe Superintelligence, a $32 billion AI startup co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist. Later, it hired the company’s CEO, Daniel Gross.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
