Anthropic CEO mocks Mark Zuckerberg's poaching tactics: ‘Something that can't be bought'

Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei claimed that Meta's attempts to recruit staff have failed and criticised Mark Zuckerberg's approach to AI talent acquisition.

Amid reports of Meta's recent poaching attempts on Apple, OpenAI and Google staff, AI startup Anthropic has claimed that it is not matching competing offers to retain its employees. Speaking on the "Big Technology Podcast", Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei revealed he recently sent a Slack message to all his employees and told them that the company would not "compromise our compensation principles" or "principles of fairness" when any of them receive offers from other companies.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that his goal was to bring superintelligence to every individual. (AFP)

Calling Meta's poaching attempts a "unifying moment," he added that matching such offers would be unfair to the other employees. "If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dartboard and it 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, just as talented," he said.

He also added that compared to other companies, Meta's offers had captured fewer Anthropic employees, with some refusing to "even talk" to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. However, the tech giant did poach Anthropopic software engineer Joel Pobar.

According to media reports, Meta has offered more than $200 million in compensation to one Apple AI researcher to work on his superintelligence team.

Amodei also attacked Zuckerberg, accusing him of "trying to buy something that can't be bought", referring to the AI company's mission. The Meta CEO, meanwhile, has said that his goal was to bring superintelligence to every individual through his new lab and not use AI to automate the workforce like "others in the industry".