one year on
Meta pays AI researcher $250 million in NBA-style deal as talent war intensifies
A 24-year-old researcher's compensation package dwarfs those of Manhattan Project scientists and Apollo astronauts, reflecting the astronomical sums Silicon Valley is willing to pay for a tiny pool of elite AI talent.
Meta has agreed to pay 24-year-old AI researcher Matt Deitke approximately $250 million over four years — with up to $100 million in the first year — after he initially turned down a $125 million offer and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened. The deal, reported by The New York Times, is emblematic of an accelerating talent war among Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and others for a tiny pool of researchers with the expertise to push toward artificial general intelligence.
The compensation far surpasses historical scientific salaries. Adjusted for inflation, J. Robert Oppenheimer earned about $190,000 annually leading the Manhattan Project; Deitke will earn 327 times that. Neil Armstrong made the equivalent of $244,639 in his Apollo years. Even top NBA stars trail: Steph Curry’s recent four-year contract was $35 million less than Deitke’s deal.
Young researchers maintain private chat groups on Slack and Discord to share offer details and negotiation strategies. Some hire unofficial agents. Meta also offers computing resources — some potential hires have been told they would receive 30,000 GPUs. The talent wars have led OpenAI to adjust its compensation structure and ask employees to consult executives before accepting outside offers.
The frenzy reflects conviction among tech leaders like Zuckerberg that superintelligence could generate trillions in value. As one executive put it to the Times: with Meta spending $80 billion annually on capital expenditures, spending an additional $5 billion or more on a world-class team is an easy call.
The record
Told investors Meta plans to keep spending on AI talent because the company has 'conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do.'
Co-host of TBPN said more people are following AI recruitment 'the way our friends from college obsess over sports – the personalities, the players, the leagues.'
Co-founder of Vercept joked on social media: 'We look forward to joining Matt on his private island next year.'
OpenAI's chief research officer said at a company meeting that OpenAI has not matched Meta's offers because 'I personally think that in order to work here, you have to believe in the upside of OpenAI.'
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The frenzy cooled almost as fast as it peaked. Within months Meta's Superintelligence Labs was shedding expensively recruited researchers — some, like Avi Verma and Ethan Knight, returned to OpenAI within weeks — and in October 2025 Meta cut roughly 600 jobs across its older AI teams as new chief AI officer Alexandr Wang consolidated the unit. Deitke's deal still stands as the emblem of the 2025 talent war, but by mid-2026 the nine-figure bidding had eased and the sharper question was whether the stars Meta paid for had shipped enough to justify the checks.
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