Meta’s $100M Offers Were ’Pretty Cheap’—Anthropic Cofounder Says Team Wasn’t Tempted

Big Tech throws cash like confetti—but some startups aren’t biting.

When Meta dangled $100M acquisition offers in front of Anthropic’s team, the AI firm’s cofounder shrugged it off as chump change. "Pretty cheap," he called it—and walked away without a second glance.

Silicon Valley’s playbook? Buy innovation you can’t build. But with VCs still drunk on 2021’s bubble juice, nine-figure bids now barely raise eyebrows. Meanwhile, Zuck’s Metaverse piggybank bleeds $10B+ a year on vaporware. Priorities.

Lesson? Real disruption isn’t for sale—even when Web2 giants come knocking with dump trucks full of monopoly money.

AI growth is only going to get more frantic

Mann said, “To pay individuals like $100 million over a four‑year package, that’s actually pretty cheap compared to the value created for the business.”

Mann pointed out that this represents a remarkable scale in the AI sector. “We’re just in an unprecedented era of scale, and it’s only going to get crazier,” he said.

In 2020, Mann and several other executives left OpenAI to start Anthropic because they felt security wasn’t getting enough attention.

According to a former staffer, nearly half of OpenAI’s safety division had departed in recent years. Daniel Kokotajlo, a former governance researcher, told Fortune last year that “people who are primarily focused on thinking about AGI safety and preparedness are being increasingly marginalized.”

OpenAI, for its part, insists that security remains at the heart of its work. On its website, the company states, “Our responsibility to prepare for emerging security threats to users, customers, and global communities shapes everything we do.”

It added that its API and ChatGPT services undergo regular third‑party testing to “identify security weaknesses before they can be exploited by malicious actors.”

Meta is pushing AI salaries to new heights

Companies have always paid generous compensation for AI professionals, but now salaries are higher than ever. The trend began when Meta struck a $14.3 billion agreement last month to purchase a 49% share of Scale AI, led by its CEO, Alexandr Wang.

Following that, according to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, Meta offered enormous $100 million sign‑on incentives to his top engineers. However Meta has denied OpenAI‘s claim.

Zuckerberg said Wang will head a new superintelligence team with six top OpenAI researchers. Commentators say this talent hunt is like football clubs going after stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, highlighted in a Thursday podcast the importance of balancing purpose against compensation. “You’re encountering new kinds of challenges. You feel a lot of growth, you’re learning new things. And you’re getting richer, too, along the way. Why WOULD you want to go just because you have some guaranteed payments?” he asked.

He said he was surprised by how much Zuckerberg was offering and noted that with pay that high, “failure is not an option” for the new Meta team.

Cryptopolitan Academy: Tired of market swings? Learn how DeFi can help you build steady passive income. Register Now