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ChatGPT owner OpenAI is reportedly fighting battles with both Meta and Microsoft.
Speaking on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother Jack, OpenAI chief Sam Altman said Meta was trying to poach his staff, offering enormous golden handshakes of $100 million to those who defect.
“I’ve heard that Meta think of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman claimed on the show.
“I think it’s rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they’d hoped, and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things,” he added.
Altman labelled the financial incentives being offered to his staff as “crazy”.
“They started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team – $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp [compensation] per year.”
But, according to Altman, the huge financial incentives haven’t worked. “I’m really happy that – at least, so far – none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
Altman added that trying to lure staff with pay packets rather than a “mission” was not “going to set up a great culture” at Meta, and that his own staff will benefit from “economic rewards” if they succeed – although he didn’t strictly define what success looks like for OpenAI.
Meanwhile, reports indicate rising tension between OpenAI and its once close partner, Microsoft.
Microsoft is one of OpenAI’s biggest investors and uses the company’s technology in its own suite of Copilot AI products. In 2023, Microsoft announced it had hired Altman and other OpenAI executives, after a board-level conflict at the AI firm saw Altman fired, before being rapidly reinstated.
Now, however, it appears OpenAI would rather distance itself further from Microsoft. A report in the Wall Street Journal claims OpenAI wants Microsoft to reduce it stake in the company, and renegotiate Microsoft’s exclusive rights to resell OpenAI’s API in the cloud. It also has concerns about Microsoft getting access to the Windsurf code editor that OpenAI is in the process of buying.
What’s in it for Microsoft – which has already ploughed $13 billion into OpenAI – is less clear. However, the report suggests that negotiations between the two companies have broken down to such an extent that OpenAI is considering reporting Microsoft to antitrust regulators for anticompetitive behaviour.
Perhaps OpenAI should ask one of its reasoning models to broker a solution…
