The conflict between xAI and OpenAI is escalating again. This time it’s all about wood-fired pizza.
Over the weekend, Elon Musk and OpenAI engineers competed in X on wood-fired crusts, dough fermentation, and campus chefs.
On the surface, it was a casual exchange about free pizza for lunch. At the root of this is the condensation of trends occurring in Silicon Valley. Rival AI companies are publicly touting perks like culture and free lunches in the competition for top engineers.
The exchange began when Musk reposted a video of an xAI engineer calling his job a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“Join @xAI,” Musk wrote.
The post quickly drew a response from xAI’s competitor, OpenAI.
“Or join Codex,” said Thibault Sottiaux, an engineering lead working on OpenAI’s Codex software agent, who is also hiring. OpenAI operates “on much the same principles,” he wrote — and then added the increasingly common recruiting pitch.
“Let’s join the bright side. There’s pizza too,” Sotiaux wrote.
Musk fired back: “But how good is your wood-fired pizza?”
After that, the pizza pose shifted to the ingredients, and then to the corporate chefs who prepare them.
“But what about the fabric?” he wrote back. “There are no shortcuts. You need at least 24 hours. And our chef is 🔥.”
Musk replied, “My chef is so good that God looked at me from heaven and said you are my most delicious creation.”
“After taking a bite, he wasn’t 100% satisfied and asked the chef to improve SoTA,” Sotiaux said. “Our chefs contributed and created recipes that are widely credited with accelerating AGI timelines.”
The real battle behind the pizza post
The tomato pie-based joke was sweet, but the content was spicier.
AI labs are high-stakes competition for elite engineers, with hefty compensation packages stretching into the nine-figure realm.
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Musk’s xAI are competing for a relatively small pool of researchers who can build the next generation of models and infrastructure.
According to professional AI poacher Mark Zuckerberg, two important perks have emerged in the AI talent wars besides money. Access to GPUs and fewer direct reports.
“People say, ‘I want to minimize the number of people reporting to me and get the most out of my GPU,'” Zuckerberg said in a 2025 TITV interview.
At the same time, the broader technology industry is rolling back many of its pre-pandemic perks amid cost cuts. Remote work is becoming less widespread, layoffs are gaining momentum, and perks like pet care allowances and comprehensive wellness benefits are becoming less common for new hires.
But there’s one perk that still remains. It’s a gorgeous lunch spread.
Wood-fired pizza might also be a good idea.
