How Meta Under Zuckerberg Is Poaching Top Talent from Tech Giants

Meta is looking for new talent — and doing so aggressively. To build a powerhouse team, Mark Zuckerberg is actively poaching specialists from OpenAI and other global giants. The goal: to make Meta one of the leaders in the AI race. 

In this article, we cover how Zuckerberg is personally assembling a top-tier AI team, why the company needs it, and on what terms specialists are leaving other tech giants.

The Approach to AI Talent Poaching

Talent poaching is nothing new in Silicon Valley, but Meta has turned it into an aggressive recruitment strategy. The company is targeting AI specialists: engineers, heads of AI divisions, and more. Talent acquisition has become a core strategy for Meta, with Zuckerberg personally overseeing the process.

Meta is offering specialists high salaries, bonuses, and stock packages worth millions of dollars. The Washington Post reports compensation packages of $100–200 million. On top of that, there are annual salaries of $1–$1.4 million and the unique opportunity to work on Meta's AI project "Superintelligence Labs." Beyond the financial rewards, Meta provides specialists with access to powerful data centers and the freedom to conduct research.

Meta is also not limiting itself to poaching from large companies — it is recruiting entire teams and startups that haven't even launched yet.

What Specialists Does Meta Need?

Meta is constantly on the lookout for specialists who build new technologies. The most common job openings include: AI/ML specialists, AR/VR engineers, 3D artists, and game designers. 

The company places a strong emphasis on new talent — particularly their ability to create breakthrough AI products. Meta's official careers page is continuously updated with openings across various roles, including those listed above.

Who Is Meta Poaching — and What Does It Cost?

Meta is actively building its AI team by poaching employees from major companies such as Apple, OpenAI, and others. Below are the most notable examples of Zuckerberg's recruiting moves.

From Apple, Meta managed to recruit Ruoming Pang — one of Apple's leading engineers who worked on generative AI models. Meta offered him a $200 million compensation package to make the move. 

That figure ranks among the largest in the industry, underscoring the fierce competition in the AI space. Meta also hired two more engineers from Apple — Mark Lee and Tom Hunter. Lee was known as the first employee Pang brought on board, while Hunter was regarded as one of the best engineers in the field. The exact terms of their compensation packages have not been disclosed.

Former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman will lead Meta's new Superintelligence Labs division, following Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale.

Alexandr Wang   

Nat Friedman 

From OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, Meta recruited more than a dozen researchers, including: former DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun, and several OpenAI researchers such as Huawen Chang, Shuchao Bi, Shengjia Zhao, and Gongyu Ren. Meta also brought back Joel Pobar, who had spent over 11 years at Meta before joining Anthropic.

Joel Pobar

Zuckerberg personally handled the majority of these recruiting cases, meeting with prospective candidates at his private residences in Palo Alto and at Lake Tahoe.

Visitors outside Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California

What Does Zuckerberg Want to Build?

Zuckerberg is building Superintelligence Labs as a cornerstone of his strategy aimed at achieving AGI — artificial general intelligence that will underpin the technologies of the future, from smart assistants to autonomous researchers capable of making breakthroughs. Mark Zuckerberg is not only investing in powerful infrastructure but also recruiting the world's most talented AI researchers — with personal invitations and generous compensation packages.

On Threads, Zuckerberg stated that he is focused on assembling the most elite AI team in the field.

His goal is not simply to catch up with OpenAI or Google DeepMind, but to become the defining technology leader of the next generation. The company sees Superintelligence Labs as the foundation for building innovations capable of setting a new global standard in AI.

By rough estimates, Meta has spent at least $1–1.2 billion over the past year alone on building its elite AI team. This includes multi-million-dollar compensation packages for individual specialists, poaching entire teams from tech giants, as well as bonuses, equity, and perks the company offers to top talent.

Given the ambitious goal of achieving AGI and launching Superintelligence Labs, Meta is unlikely to stop at the talent it has already brought on board. On the contrary, the company will continue to actively expand the division, seeking out even more leading AI researchers and engineers from around the world.