The alleged attempts by Meta to hire OpenAI staffers are the latest signs of a frenzy to hire top engineers to develop AI models, and they come at a time when the Facebook owner is working on building its superintelligence unit to catch up with competitors.

Meta offered $100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker's talent and strengthen its own generative AI teams, the startup's CEO, Sam Altman, has said. Facebook's parent company -- a competitor of OpenAI -- also offered "giant" annual salaries exceeding $100 million to OpenAI staffers,