Daniel Francis, the founder of Abel and self-described enfant terrible of the algorithmic age, recently shocked the tech community by claiming that Meta offered a single AI hire an incredible $1.25 billion, which translates to an incredible $312 million annually over four years. Francis merely stated, “By the way, Person said no,” in spite of the astounding number.
Francis, who is known for igniting controversy and drawing attention to excesses in the AI gold rush, made the revelation on social media. Francis later revised the offer from its initial billion-dollar pitch to $1.25 billion. Francis responded to a question about the state of the industry by saying that intellectual property is now “in people’s heads,” referring to a developing trend in which top AI talent is valued similarly to corporate acquisitions or proprietary software.
The spectacle is nothing new to Francis. Before being hired by Elon Musk in 2023, he deceived multiple media outlets by posing as a fired Twitter employee, which led to his viral fame. He has now taken to exposing the enormous sums being offered to elite AI engineers as the CEO of a startup that uses body cam and dispatch data to create AI-generated police reports.
Other insiders surprisingly added that these offers aren’t that uncommon. “When viewed as acquihires — talent acquisitions where companies pay not just for code or product but for the brainpower and ideas inside a person’s head,” said an AI researcher, who is thought to have previously worked for OpenAI.
This is just one instance of Meta’s aggressive hiring practices. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, disclosed in June that Meta was luring OpenAI employees with signing bonuses worth $100 million. Altman remarked, “I’m really happy that none of our best people have chosen to take them up on that, at least not yet.”
Although the figures may seem ludicrous, they are becoming more and more real in the current AI race.
