Someone who knows all three men calls the trio “the avengers”. He reckons they will have huge additional sums at their disposal to hire top AI researchers in order to unseat Open AI, maker of Chat GPT, as the dominant generative- AI firm. “They’re going to go big,” he says.

It’s easily the most expensive hire of all time, dwarfing the billions that Google spent to rehire Noam Shazeer and his core team from Character.AI (a deal Zuckerberg passed on). “Opportunities of this magnitude often come at a cost,” Wang wrote in his note to employees this week. “In this instance, that cost is my departure.”

OpenAI's CEO says Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has been making 'giant offers' to try and poach the company's staff. 'You know, like a $100 million signing bonus,' Sam Altman says.