Musk’s remarks follow Meta’s aggressive AI hiring spree, as Zuckerberg defends spending billions to attract top researchers, asserting that building a “talent-dense team” is essential to support the company’s supercomputing and innovation goals
Elon Musk has weighed in on the growing AI talent war engulfing Silicon Valley, claiming that his startup xAI is attracting top engineers from Meta—without offering the exorbitant compensation packages that have recently made headlines.
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Musk revealed that several high-performing engineers from Meta have already joined xAI, lured not by million-dollar bonuses but by the company’s mission and merit-based growth potential. “Many strong Meta engineers have and are joining xAI without the need for insane initial comp (still great, but not unsustainably high),” Musk wrote. “xAI has vastly more market cap growth potential than Meta. And we are hyper merit-based: do something great and your comp can shift substantially higher.”
Musk’s comments come as Meta aggressively expands its Superintelligence Labs division, triggering a wave of high-profile AI recruitment and intensifying competition among tech giants. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently addressed the company’s approach, stating during an earnings call that it is “building an elite, talent-dense team,” and that it makes strategic sense to “compete super hard” for top-tier researchers when billions are being invested in compute and infrastructure.
Meta’s $72B AI gamble
Meta’s capital expenditures are expected to soar to $72 billion in 2025—an increase of nearly $30 billion year-over-year—as the company doubles down on AI development.
The Superintelligence Labs team has brought in notable talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, Apple, and Google. Recent additions include Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s AI models team, with a reported package exceeding $200 million, and Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of ChatGPT and former lead scientist at OpenAI, who now serves as Meta’s chief scientist. Other big names include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang.
Industry insiders say Meta’s intensified hiring efforts were fuelled by dissatisfaction with the performance of its Llama 4 AI model. The model reportedly drew inspiration from Chinese AI firm DeepSeek but failed to meet expectations. Sources suggest Zuckerberg has since taken personal charge of recruitment, even reaching out directly to candidates and hosting AI researchers at his residence.
As Musk and Zuckerberg take opposing approaches to building the next generation of AI teams, the competition underscores the growing importance—and scarcity—of world-class talent in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
