Microsoft offers millions to poach Meta's top AI engineers

Big tech might be laying off thousands of rank-and-file workers, but when it comes to elite AI researchers, the checkbooks are wide open.

Microsoft is aggressively poaching AI talent from Meta, deploying multimillion-dollar compensation packages and creating an express lane to match Meta's eye-popping offers, according to internal documents and insiders reported by Business Insider.

A targeted hit list and 24-hour turnaround

Microsoft is not casting a wide net; it is using a literal spreadsheet of its most-wanted Meta employees.

The spreadsheet circulating among hiring managers lists candidates by name, location, and role, zeroing in on key teams: Reality Labs, GenAI Infrastructure, and Meta AI Research.

The poaching effort is spearheaded by two groups with dedicated recruiting squads: Microsoft AI, led by former DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, and CoreAI, headed by former Meta engineering executive Jay Parikh. In fact, Parikh’s own org chart is already packed with former Meta colleagues.

To move fast, Microsoft built a new fast-track process. Recruiters mark candidates as "critical AI talent," triggering higher-ups to respond with the company's best offer within 24 hours.

The process uses a bespoke "compensation modeler" and external compensation consultants to blow past Microsoft's traditional pay bands. Standard top-tier guidelines cap base salaries at around $408,000, with $1.9 million in on-hire stock awards and nearly $1.5 million in annual stock. The new carve-out lets executives shatter those ceilings, making multimillion-dollar signing bonuses increasingly routine.

Matching Meta's nine-figure bids

Microsoft's aggressive posture comes down to one thing: Meta is driving up prices across the entire valley.

Meta has reportedly been throwing around nine-figure packages to lure AI talent. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously said Meta offered $100 million signing bonuses to his engineers, and Meta has recently hired AI researchers with packages reaching as high as $250 million.

While Microsoft's market cap pushes toward $4 trillion off the back of generative AI excitement, keeping that momentum requires top-tier builders. Even after cutting thousands of jobs this year, Microsoft insists head count will stay flat, signaling that severed payroll is being aggressively redirected toward AI.

Why it matters

We think this internal poaching blitz shows how desperate legacy tech giants are to control their own AI destiny.

Relying on OpenAI for frontier models was a brilliant early move for Microsoft, but long-term survival means owning the underlying infrastructure and research stack. Meta has spent years cultivating elite talent in open-source AI and large-scale compute infrastructure. Poaching teams directly from Reality Labs and Meta AI Research is Microsoft's fastest shortcut to closing that technical gap.

That said, throwing multimillion-dollar packages at outside hires while laying off thousands of employees is a massive organizational risk. It creates instant compensation disparities with existing staff and bets enormous capital on individual rockstars who may or may not thrive inside Microsoft's corporate culture.

Right now, if you are an elite engineer working on compute infrastructure or foundation models, your market leverage has never been higher. But for Microsoft, winning the bidding war is only step one; turning that expensive brainpower into actual product differentiation will be the real test.