Reid Hoffman, a former Openai board member and co-founder of LinkedIn, says it makes economic sense for tech companies to offer eye-opening signature bonuses to lure top AI talent into the ranks.
“The competition for talent for your average American looks crazy. The amount you pay individuals to do this,” Hoffman said in an interview with CNBC about the bystanders at the Sun Valley Conference on Wednesday.
The hunt for top AI researchers is getting heated as companies like Meta try to gain a foothold in the industry by poaching wages in line with hundreds of millions of dollars adjustments.
But Hoffman said the exorbitant wage package might make sense for businesses if they believe new recruiting jobs can have a significant impact on the industry.
“If I invented something that is essentially curing cancer and trying to change the industry with my own startup mana, and if I think this individual is the person who does it, it's starting to become more economically rational,” Hoffman told CNBC on Wednesday.
Last month, Meta said it had invested $15 billion in data labelle company Scaleai. The social media giant said Scaleai founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta as AI chief executive as part of the deal.
Wang will be co-leading the former CEO of GitHub, Nat Friedman and Meta Superintelligence Labs. The rest of the King's team consists of Openai, Google and top researchers of humanity.
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Openai CEO Sam Altman criticized Meta's poaching tactics in a podcast interview that aired last month. Altman said he felt that Meta was offering employees a $100 million signature bonus “crazy.” He added that Meta's “a mass pre-completion strategy” is unlikely to “set a great culture.”
Altman isn't the only one who thinks Meta's recruitment efforts are flawed.
Former Openai board member Helen Toner said in an interview with Bloomberg last week that it's not easy for Meta to maintain new AI jobs.
Toner, who left Openai's board of directors in November 2023, said Meta will face “attempts to poach them to other companies from day one.” Meta, she added, needs to show that if they want new recruits to stay, they are “moving fast enough.”
Hoffman's representative did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
