Meta Platforms Inc. has accelerated its artificial intelligence efforts with large investments. Most significantly, it picked up a $14.3 billion equity stake in Scale AI, seizing the attention of industry titans. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, ripped the decision. He criticized Meta’s talent poaching strategy and its chilling effect on competition and innovation within the emerging AI field.
Perhaps that’s why Meta has been on a huge buying spree these past couple weeks. They took a controlling 49% share of Scale AI and poached talent from other top technology companies. Interestingly, one of its architects, Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, announced his departure for Meta as part of this $2B strategic deal. In addition, the company managed to lure away Jack Rae, the principal researcher from Google’s AI research laboratory, DeepMind. These moves serve to demonstrate Meta’s desire to further its AI efforts as it develops large-scale models.
On an episode released Tuesday, Altman confronted Meta’s corporate strategy to lure top talent. He pointed out their secret sauce — big, up-front, guaranteed pay. He really critiqued this approach. He argues that it steals focus from real, impactful work and ultimately undermines the bedrock of a winning culture in organizations.
“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,’” – Sam Altman
Altman underscored that these kinds of tactics don’t usually pan out. As he wrote, too often for these companies you’re no longer innovating—you’re just replicating your competitor’s previous successes. This mindset numbs a culture of experimentation, iteration and improvement.
“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.” – Sam Altman
Despite Altman’s reservations, he acknowledged the aggressive nature of Meta’s current AI efforts. He acknowledged those past initiatives missed the mark but applauded the company for being willing to take risks on new concepts.
“Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.” – Sam Altman
Meta’s long-term investments have been key to its ambition to be at the forefront of developing AI technologies. By investing heavily in the training of its behemoth models, the company is looking to improve its competitive stance in a rapidly evolving field.
Altman’s remarks occurred on June 2, 2025, while making an appearance at the Snowflake Summit, held in San Francisco. Specifically, he noted the cutthroat nature of the AI landscape, suggesting that Meta sees OpenAI as a major competitor.
“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” – Sam Altman
As Meta continues to build its AI capabilities through strategic acquisitions and talent recruitment, the industry will closely monitor how these developments shape the future of artificial intelligence and whether these strategies yield meaningful innovations or simply replicate existing solutions.