Anthropic cofounder claims Meta’s 'pretty cheap' $100M offers did not tempt his team

Cofounder Benjamin Mann noted on “Lenny’s Podcast” this Sunday that the scale of Meta’s hefty offers failed to budge Anthropic’s staff.

Mann said the focus was on the mission, not Meta’s profits.“It’s not a hard choice,” he said. He added that, while other AI firms lost staff to big paydays, Anthropic has kept its pros. “I think we’ve been maybe much less affected than many of the other companies in the space because people here are so mission‑oriented,” Mann said.

Mann also acknowledged that accepting huge contracts can make sense for certain individuals.

“Other people have different life circumstances,” he said. His comments come amid intense competition among technology leaders, including Meta and OpenAI, vying to attract top AI talent with big payouts.

“I’m pretty sure it’s real,” Mann added regarding $100 million signing bonuses offered by Meta for AI engineers.

AI growth is only going to get more frantic

Mann said, “To pay individuals like $100 million over a four‑year package, that’s actually pretty cheap compared to the value created for the business.”

Mann pointed out that this represents a remarkable scale in the AI sector. “We’re just in an unprecedented era of scale, and it’s only going to get crazier,” he said.

In 2020, Mann and several other executives left OpenAI to start Anthropic because they felt security wasn’t getting enough attention.

According to a former staffer, nearly half of OpenAI’s safety division had departed in recent years. Daniel Kokotajlo, a former governance researcher, told Fortune last year that “people who are primarily focused on thinking about AGI safety and preparedness are being increasingly marginalized.”

OpenAI, for its part, insists that security remains at the heart of its work. On its website, the company states, “Our responsibility to prepare for emerging security threats to users, customers, and global communities shapes everything we do.”

It added that its API and ChatGPT services undergo regular third‑party testing to “identify security weaknesses before they can be exploited by malicious actors.”

Meta is pushing AI salaries to new heights

Companies have always paid generous compensation for AI professionals, but now salaries are higher than ever. The trend began when Meta struck a $14.3 billion agreement last month to purchase a 49% share of Scale AI, led by its CEO, Alexandr Wang.

Following that, according to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, Meta offered enormous $100 million sign‑on incentives to his top engineers. However Meta has denied OpenAI‘s claim.

Zuckerberg said Wang will head a new superintelligence team with six top OpenAI researchers. Commentators say this talent hunt is like football clubs going after stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, highlighted in a Thursday podcast the importance of balancing purpose against compensation. “You’re encountering new kinds of challenges. You feel a lot of growth, you’re learning new things. And you’re getting richer, too, along the way. Why would you want to go just because you have some guaranteed payments?” he asked.

He said he was surprised by how much Zuckerberg was offering and noted that with pay that high, “failure is not an option” for the new Meta team.

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