Meta's 'Godfather' Offer
Over the weekend, I tried to square some circles around the "$100M Signing Bonus" headlines surrounding Meta's attempts to lure top AI talent to their new "Superintelligence" team. My main takeaway? While the $100M signing bonuses were likely exaggerated, the overall packages also seemed likely from a company, driven by their founder, that clearly felt an existential need to get back into the AI race. Subsequent reporting by Zoë Schiffer seems to further clarify the extraordinary situation. And it's perhaps closer to the exaggerations side!
As Mark Zuckerberg staffs up Meta’s new superintelligence lab, he’s offering top research talent pay packages of up to $300 million over four years, with more than $100 million in total compensation for the first year, WIRED has learned.
Meta has made at least 10 of these staggeringly high offers to OpenAI staffers. One high ranking researcher was pitched on the role of chief scientist but turned it down, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations. While the pay package includes equity, in the first year the stock vests immediately, sources say.
To be clear, that $100M slug may still not technically be a "signing bonus" – which most would consider to be a lump-sum cash payment due at signing – but depending on how it's actually structured, it could be considered close enough.
The "vests immediately" element is clearly key here. That implies an RSU grant with front-loaded vesting for that first year (or two different RSU grants, I suppose). If it's truly "immediately", the employee would get the stock that presumably they could sell at any time (well, in normal employee trading windows outside of earnings season, etc), unless Meta put some sort of restrictions on the sale of the stock? Presumably, they'd want some sort of claw-back mechanism in place in case the employee were to leave immediately – though maybe not if they just really want to make a statement with these offers! (I mean, there must be a claw-back provision, right? RIGHT?!)
Regardless, if the vesting truly is immediate, the employee would also owe taxes on the amount right away (well, at quarterly tax time in the US given the amounts we're talking). And assuming everyone is in California, that will be just north of 50% going bye-bye right off the bat – so they're probably going to want to sell at least some of that stock as soon as they can. Well, unless Meta is also covering the tax burden. They could, but that seems unlikely as this entire thing is already not an efficient way to do comp. (Meta's finance team must be loving this. Not.)
Anyway, with "more than" $100M due in that first year (is that because of an actual signing bonus in cash, or perhaps just their regular old salary/bonus?), the remaining $200M or so would presumably vest over the four year span, per the wording in the report. So that's roughly $50M a year in equity grants. Which would be more than double what Meta's executive team gets (which, of course, is public given that Meta is a public company). It's also more than what almost all CEOs get for all but the largest companies in the world. And also Warner Bros. Discovery.
Okay, so such an offer is rather incredible. Even more incredible is that Meta made said offer to "at least 10" people at OpenAI. Was Meta really ready to commit $3B in comp to these 10 people or (more likely) were they just hoping to entice some of them with the offer, knowing not all of them would take it? In fact, they undoubtedly started with one such offer and then went down a list.
But even more incredible, apparently none of them took it!
On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg sent a note to Meta staff introducing the new superintelligence team. Alexandr Wang, formerly the CEO of Scale AI, is now Meta’s chief AI officer, Zuckerberg said. He’s joined by Nat Friedman who previously led GitHub. Together, Wang and Friedman will colead an organization Zuckerberg dubbed the Meta Superintelligence Labs. The company did not name a chief scientist or a chief research officer as part of the announcement. Neither Wang nor Friedman are thought of as researchers, at least in the traditional sense. None of the OpenAI staffers who left for Meta received the $300 million offer, according to a source with knowledge of the contracts.
That's right, none of the seven people listed as jumping ship from OpenAI to Meta got what I simply must call the "Godfather" offer, apparently. And actually, it's not a "Godfather" offer because those that got it seemingly did refuse! It's not clear who was getting those offers, but presumably it is the kind of researchers that could fill the "Chief Scientist" or "Chief Research Officer" roles.
In yet another scoop on the matter, Schiffer obtained a Sam Altman memo on the OpenAI side about the defections:
“Meta has gotten a few great people for sure, but on the whole, it is hard to overstate how much they didn't get their top people and had to go quite far down their list; they have been trying to recruit people for a super long time, and I've lost track of how many people from here they've tried to get to be their Chief Scientist,” he wrote. “I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.”
With that, you can probably guess some of the names they're going after within OpenAI, and it appears they have failed so far in those efforts and instead moved down a rung or two. What might those "second-tier" offers have been? A mere $50M upfront? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough given all the leakage (on both sides) here.
Still, assuming the above is all accurate, it seems pretty clear that Altman was at least being more directionally truthful in his (public) comments on the situation than Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth was in his (leaked) internal comments on the situation. Boz tried to portray Altman's statement as deceiving. And while the technicalities around the offers may be a bit different, they're still directionally what Altman said they were at a high level, it seems!
As I wrote over the weekend, Boz clearly took his approach to addressing the offers from the position of trying to snuff out any internal disarray around this newfound compensation discrepancy. And again, I think it's probably fair to believe that the "Godfather" offers were meant for key executives Meta would bring on board, not necessarily the rank and file. But that's also hard to say without knowing what those "second-tier" offers – the ones that were accepted – are...
And that leads to one think I'd like to correct from my writing on the matter. Back to Schiffer's first report:
Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer at Meta, said that not everyone is getting a $100 million offer during a Q&A with employees last week. “Look, you guys, the market's hot. It's not that hot. Okay? So it's just a lie,” he said. “We have a small number of leadership roles that we're hiring for, and those people do command a premium.” He added that the $100 million is not a sign-on bonus, but “all these different things” and noted OpenAI is countering the offers.
The original transcript left out the "lie" part. As such, I wrote:
There's actually quite a lot said – and not said – in those four simple sentences. First, Boz is implying that what Altman is saying about the Meta comp offers just isn't true. But he specifically doesn't say he's "lying" – because he himself notes that there's some level of truth here with the "he's suggesting that we're doing this for every person" which itself suggests that Meta are making such offers for some people – just being "dishonest" as if to suggest that Altman is taking something with some level of truth to it and fudging it a bit to make it less true.
My bad, Boz actually did say Altman was lying. Very directly! And given this new report about the "Godfather" offer and that it was made to over 10 people, I think it's totally fair for Altman to have said what he said:
"They started making these like giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like $100M signing bonuses, more than that comp per year."
So kudos to Meta on the poaching. But the fact that they got no takers on the "Godfather" offer is seemingly a problem for the company. And the fact that they're being disingenuous with their employee base internally seems more so.
One more thing:
“That’s about how much it would take for me to go work at Meta,” says one OpenAI staffer who spoke with WIRED on the condition of anonymity as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the company. Other employees said that they were weighing the money against the potential impact they could have at Meta in comparison to OpenAI. Several believed their impact would be greater at OpenAI.
First, a legit lol at that quote. Ouch. Second, it points to the larger element of all this – yes, beyond even the insanely large comp offers. But that's another post...
Update: That other post...
M.G. Siegler