Elon Musk has revealed that some senior engineers at Meta have moved to xAI without big compensation packages. The Tesla CEO predicted that in the long run, xAI could well exceed Meta in valuation, noting that the firm awards substantial raises to its top performers.
Elon Musk also added that most of the engineers at the company joined without premium entry-level packages, placing their faith in the growth potential of xAI. His comments came in response to an X post indicating that Meta approached upwards of 100 OpenAI employees and successfully onboarded at least ten in a “desperate move.”
Recently, Zuckerberg had also disclosed that Shengjia Zhao, the mind behind ChatGPT’s development, has taken on the role of chief scientist at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Reportedly, other candidates turned down Meta’s offers because they saw OpenAI as closer to true AGI, preferred the speed and flexibility of a smaller team, and didn’t want to work on ad-driven projects. In another post, the user said, “no AI lab matches xAI speed with a small team in just two years”.
Elon Musk discusses xAI as tech talent war intensifies
In its first year, xAI released ten new tools: two chatbots (Grok 2 and Grok Mini), an image generator called Aurora, the Grok Button for quick analysis, a mobile app, Grok 3 with DeepSearch, an uncensored voice mode, Grok 4, a companions feature, and the “Imagine” tool. The company’s growth has impressed observers as AI firms, including OpenAI, Google, and Meta, continue to battle it out to attract top tech researchers.
Meta has expanded its AI arm and earmarked $14 billion in funding for Scale AI. In June, Meta launched Superintelligence Labs as a research hub designed to assemble top experts in the domain. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has claimed that Meta dangled compensation packages reaching $100 million to lure his team, a claim Meta disputes.
According to WIRED, more than ten such recruitment offers were extended to OpenAI staff. In one case, a seasoned researcher was even tapped for a chief scientist position but opted not to accept. Moreover, any shares or stock options Meta promised to those new hires would become 100% theirs after one year on the job.
Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann discussed the move at a recent interview, noting that the firm’s employees remain unswayed by the lavish incentives. He added that Anthropic employees believe in what they are building at the company. According to a recent Cryptopolitan report, Meta and Microsoft saw their market cap climb by around $550 billion in a single day.
In early trades in Europe on Thursday, Meta’s shares surged 12.2% in Frankfurt and Microsoft’s advanced 9% following a modest pullback late Wednesday. That momentum helped push S&P 500 futures up 1% and Nasdaq futures by 1.3% ahead of the U.S. open. Meta surpassed second-quarter estimates, delivering earnings of $7.14 per share versus a $5.89 consensus, and generating $47.52 billion in revenue against the $44.83 billion forecast.
