OpenAI withstands Meta's billions in poaching and turns to sign a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed on June 17 during a YouTube program "Uncapped" hosted by his brother Jack Altman that Meta spent over a hundred million in signing bonuses to poach OpenAI engineers. However, he emphasized that not a single one of their strongest core talents has left. Almost simultaneously, OpenAI successfully signed a $200 million pilot contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, entering the defense AI market, with the competition between the two tech giants in AI escalating.

Meta is aggressively poaching OpenAI employees to build an AI "superintelligence" team.

Altman called Meta's poaching efforts simply crazy, revealing that they offered $100 million to poach their own engineers, with potential annual salary packages even higher. He added that Meta has already presented quite attractive conditions to several OpenAI employees, but so far, not a single one of the core, top talents has "left."

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg ( Marc Zuckerberg) is building an AI superintelligence team, even personally recruiting. Recently, he invested a whopping 14.3 billion USD in the AI company Scale AI and successfully poached its CEO Alexandr Wang to join his AI superintelligence team.

According to reports, Meta has successfully poached talents from a number of well-known technology companies, including Jack Rae, principal researcher of Google DeepMind, and others, and the robbery operation has spread throughout the technology industry.

On the left is Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, and on the right is Jack Rae Altman, Chief Researcher at Google DeepMind, insinuating Meta: True innovation is not about throwing money at it.

Regarding Meta's recent poaching actions, Altman stated that Meta views OpenAI as its biggest competitor, which he respects greatly. However, he pointed out that despite Meta's aggressive investment and willingness to experiment, he believes they still lack true innovative capabilities.

Altman also offered his views on why these people rejected Meta's high-paying offers, saying:

"If work becomes solely about money, rather than passion or a sense of mission, creating such a corporate culture is very risky. I believe we understand many things that Meta does not yet understand."

OpenAI wins a $200 million AI contract from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Less than a day apart, OpenAI announced that it has signed a one-year pilot contract worth $200 million with the U.S. Department of Defense to assist the military in testing AI technology and applying it to administrative and cybersecurity operations. This is also the first major project of OpenAI's newly established department "OpenAI for Government."

Officials said the department integrated previously fragmented government cooperation programs, including ChatGPT Gov, (NASA) with NASA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Projects with the Ministry of Finance.

The focus of this collaboration is to simplify the administrative processes for military healthcare, prevent cyber attacks, and enhance operational efficiency. OpenAI has previously partnered with defense technology company Anduril to develop an AI anti-drone system and has recruited former national security officials to join its policy team and board, actively expanding its influence in the defense and government AI sectors, while emphasizing adherence to democratic values and the protection of the public interest.

This article discusses how OpenAI fended off Meta's multi-million dollar poaching attempts and turned around to sign a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, originally appearing in Chain News ABMedia.