July 4, 2025 – Yesterday, on July 3, tech media outlet WccFtech dropped a bombshell report. It turns out that Meta did manage to poach researchers from OpenAI, but the whopping “$100 million signing bonus” that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, had claimed was nothing but a myth.
Back on June 21, Altman made a statement on a Wednesday, alleging that Meta had offered a staggering $100 million bonus to one of OpenAI’s employees in an attempt to lure them away, though the move ultimately failed.
In November 2024, three AI experts from Google DeepMind, namely Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, joined OpenAI.
However, on June 27, Lucas Beyer took to Twitter to announce that he would be joining Meta. He also made it clear that he hadn’t received the $100 million reward, branding the claim as fake news.
