It appears that the competition for top artificial intelligence talent is not going to end anytime soon. NowOpenAICEOSam Altmanhas issued a fiery response to Meta’s aggressive hiring of top AI talent, calling the escalating competition a “war cry” and declaring: “Winning is fun. And I expect to win.” Speaking at a recent podcast interview, Altman addressed the claims thatMetaCEOMark Zuckerbergwas using “mafioso poaching style,” in order to poach top AI talent from rival companies. “I mean, you know, they want to get into the AI game. I understand it. So, and if he’s going to do this, he needs to hire some people. So, bring it,” Altman said.

Angry OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responds to Mark Zuckerberg ‘poaching’

Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for the first publicly addressed the aggressive hiring by Meta. Replying with a brief “fine” and “good” when asked about the talent battle with Mark Zuckerberg, Altman said he hasn’t spoken to the Meta CEO since the poaching began.”We have, obviously an incredibly talented team, and I think they really love what they are doing. Obviously, some people will go to different places,” Altman told reporters at the Sun Valley conference. “There’s a lot of excitement, I guess you could say, in the industry. But no, I think we feel fine.”As reported by Benzinga, at a recent podcast appearance, Altman said Meta’s hiring tactics resemble ‘mafioso’ moves“. I mean, you know, they want to get into the AI game. I understand it. So, and if he’s going to do this, he needs to hire some people. So, bring it,” Altman said, adding, “winning is fun. And I expect to win.”

Meta’s billion-dollar hiring spree

The comments come after Meta successfully recruited at least seven OpenAI researchers for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs, including key contributors to OpenAI’s reasoning models. Meta’s Superintelligence Labs are headed by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Multiple online reports suggest that the Meta offered a compensation package of $20 million annually to reachers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Apple. Notable hires include Apple’s former Foundation Models head Ruoming Pang and seven OpenAI researchers specializing in large language models.Recently, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth also acknowledged this rivalry. In a recent interview to CNBC, Andrew Bosworth, said, “Sam neglected to mention that he’s countering those offers,” referencing rumors of $100 million signing bonuses from OpenAI.With only around 2,000 researchers globally capable of building foundational AI models, the battle for talent is fierce—and increasingly public.