Microsoft Prepared To Poach Hundreds Of OpenAI Employees, CTO Says

The tech giant would provide matching compensation to employees looking to leave OpenAI, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said.

Microsoft is ready to hire any interested OpenAI employees at matching compensation, according to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.

Scott posted the offer Tuesday on X, in the wake of last Friday’s ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and a petition against the move signed by more than 700 of the generative AI firm’s 770 employees.

[Related: 7 Things To Know About OpenAI’s Turmoil And Its Ex-CEO (Potentially) Joining Microsoft]

The petition included a threat by the employees to quit OpenAI over the firing of Altman, who has since agreed to join Microsoft.

Altman, however, was also continuing talks Tuesday about rejoining OpenAI, according to multiple reports.

Despite Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI to the tune of $13 billion, the tech giant is more than happy to snap up any disaffected employees of the ChatGPT creator, according to Scott.

“To my partners at OpenAI: We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsoft’s new AI Research Lab,” he wrote in the post on X.

“Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission,” Scott wrote.

Executives at Salesforce and Nvidia had earlier made recruiting attempts.

On Monday, Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff made an offer in an X post to “match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team.” Meanwhile, Nvidia senior AI scientist Jim Fan said on X that his team would be interested in hiring engineers, researchers and product professionals from OpenAI.