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Fortune

Technology

Eva Roytburg

Inside Silicon Valley’s ‘soup wars’: Why Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI are hand-delivering liquid lunch to poach AI talent

Mark Zuckerberg OpenAI Chen Meta Silicon Valley Valley

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (Credit: David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images)

In the high-stakes arms race between Meta and OpenAI for AI dominance, the weapon of choice has evolved. First, it was unlimited compute, then $100 million signing bonuses. Now, the battle has entered a new, bizarrely intimate phase: soup wars.

Mark Chen, chief research officer at OpenAI, said on a podcast with tech podcaster Ashlee Vance that the recruitment war has shifted. According to Chen, Meta has aggressively pursued half of his direct reports—backed by a $10 billion war chest for talent—but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has added a personal touch to the poaching attempts.

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