- Anthropic billionaire CEO Dario Amodei says many of his employees are turning down Meta’s $100 million poaching offers, adding they “wouldn’t even talk to Mark Zuckerberg.” And the tech titan isn’t willing to fight fire with fire by raising his own star staffers’ salaries to persuade them to stay at the $61.5 billion AI company, saying it’s “unfair” and could hurt company culture. Amodei and other Silicon Valley CEOs, including Sam Altman, have criticized Meta’s strategy as being a killer for company culture.
Tech companies like Meta and Google have waged an all-out talent war in the fight to build the next revolutionary AI—but Anthropic’s stars aren’t being won over by the promise of $100 million pay packages.
“Relative to other companies, a lot fewer people from Anthropic have been caught by these. And it’s not for lack of trying,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently revealed on the Big Technology Podcast. “I’ve talked to plenty of people who got these offers at Anthropic and who just turned them down. Who wouldn’t even talk to Mark Zuckerberg.”
Meta’s been on a tear to dominate AI, and if it can’t grow the talent internally, its CEO Zuckerberg has no qualms about buying it instead. In June, reports revealed that he’s been poaching staff at competitor companies (including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic) with $100 million signing bonuses, in an effort to beef up his “superintelligence” AI lab.
Some have taken up his envy-inducing offer, including at least seven staffers from OpenAI, but Amodei insisted that most of his employees haven’t taken the bait—and he’s not throwing money at staff to keep them.
Why Anthropic’s CEO won’t use cash to convince workers to stay
Employers may be tempted to fight fire with fire by raising their AI stars’ salaries or recruiting others in return, but Anthropic thinks it would hurt its company culture.
“We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers,” Amodei said. “The way things work at Anthropic is there’s a series of levels. One candidate comes in, they get assigned a level, and we don’t negotiate that level, because we think it’s unfair. We want to have a systematic way.”
Amodei not only thinks that it’s unfair to raise salaries to have his workers stick around, but that it could actually backfire on his billion-dollar company’s mission. In actuality, staying true to his compensation practices amid the poaching chaos has been a win for Anthropic’s culture.
“I think actually this was a unifying moment for the company where we didn’t give in. We refused to compromise our principles, because we had the confidence that people are Anthropic because they truly believe in the mission,” Amodei continued.
“The only way you can really be hurt by this is if you allow it to destroy the culture of your company by panicking, by treating people unfairly, in an attempt to defend the company.”
Fortune has reached out to Anthropic and Meta for comment.
Amodei’s criticism of Zuckerberg’s $100 million poaching strategy
Zuckerberg’s aggressive poaching strategy has ruffled some feathers in the AI world. Being scooped up with a $100 million pay package is a dream for most, but the Anthropic CEO has called out the practice for being fundamentally unfair.
“If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dart board and hits your name, that doesn’t mean that you should be paid 10 times more than the guy next to you who’s just as skilled, who’s just as talented,” Amodei said on the podcast.
Plus, Amodei thinks the hiring strategy is flat-out counterproductive to what Meta wants to get done. The CEO is proud of his staffers for not giving in to the $100 million offer, and that same loyalty isn’t something that can be bought. And other AI talent seem to want in on Amodei’s culture; engineers at OpenAI were eight times more likely to leave the company for Anthropic. The company also has an 80% retention rate for employees hired over the last two years, compared to 78% at Google DeepMind, and 67% at OpenAI. Ironically, Meta is trailing behind at 64%.
Having employees who can do revolutionary work is one thing, but having a culture that makes them want to stay is another. By poaching others, Amodei doubts Meta is recruiting the best fits for its mission.
“I think that what they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought, and that is alignment with the mission. I think there are selection effects here,” he said. “Are they getting the people who are most enthusiastic, who are most mission aligned, who are most excited?”
Other tech leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have echoed Amodei’s criticism. Altman said that while Meta has managed to poach some staffers, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.” Even though Zuckerberg has snatched some of his AI workers, Altman is doubtful that his competitor will be able to replicate the same success of OpenAI.
“I think that there’s a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying, ‘We’re just going to try to copy OpenAI,’” Altman said on the Uncapped podcast last month. “That basically never works. You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate.”
