Lisa Su, CEO of chipmaker AMD, said that money «isn’t necessarily the most important factor in attracting talent.» She finds it hard to imagine AMD paying out the kind of huge cash compensation to AI specialists that Meta or Microsoft do.
Lisa Su, CEO of chipmaker AMD, said that money «isn’t necessarily the most important factor in attracting talent.» She finds it hard to imagine AMD paying out the kind of huge cash compensation to AI specialists that Meta or Microsoft do.
This is reported by Business Insider, citing Wired, which asked Lisa Su about the high salaries that Mark Zuckerberg offers to the best researchers in the field of artificial intelligence to attract them to Meta.
«I think the competition for talent is fierce. I believe money is important, but honestly, it’s not necessarily the most important factor in attracting talent. It’s important to be within those numbers, but it’s even more important to have people who really believe in the mission of what you’re trying to do,» Su said.
In early 2025, Mark Zuckerberg told an internal meeting of the company’s 70,000 employees that this year would be a «crazy» one for Meta, and that the team needed the best people. Artificial intelligence was named as one of Meta’s priorities, and this sparked a fierce competition among companies for AI specialists .
Meta reportedly offered OpenAI employees signing bonuses of $100 million, with some contracts reaching $300 million over four years. These offers have been described as «staggering» and are among the highest compensation packages in Silicon Valley history. There was even a reported multi-year, $1 billion contract offered by Meta to one of the specialists.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he thought it was «crazy» that Meta was trying to lure his employees with $100 million signing bonuses. He added that he was «very happy» that, at least so far, none of his top employees had decided to take advantage of the offer.
Altman shares Lisa Su’s opinion about Meta’s tactic of offering talented specialists generous monetary compensation.
«A strategy that is to offer a huge guaranteed reward and then invite someone to join the company on that basis, meaning really focusing on that rather than the work and the mission, is not going to create a great culture,» he said on a podcast in June.
Recall that Lisa Su was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. Her leadership transformed AMD from a company that was «unprofitable» and «uninvestable» into a corporation that exploited Intel’s weaknesses to capture precious share of the PC processor market and surpass its longtime rival in market value.
