Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Responds to Meta’s $100M Talent War

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says his company has remained resilient in the ongoing AI talent war, despite aggressive recruitment efforts by Meta, which has reportedly offered up to $100 million packages to lure top engineers and researchers. Speaking on John Collison’s "Cheeky Pint" podcast, Amodei noted that while Meta has made high-profile hires—including Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of ChatGPT, and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang—many top candidates have declined Meta’s offers. He pointed out that even when accounting for Anthropic’s smaller size, the company has seen a relatively low rate of attrition compared to rivals. “You can see publicly the list of people who went to the Meta Superintelligence Lab,” Amodei said. “Even if you normalize for our size, many turned them down.” According to Amodei, the key reasons for Anthropic’s strong retention are a deep sense of mission and confidence in the company’s long-term vision. “It’s like a mixture of true belief in the mission and belief in the upside of the equity,” he explained. He credited Anthropic’s reputation for delivering on promises—often making fewer commitments but keeping them—as a major factor in employee loyalty. While Anthropic hasn’t been entirely immune to talent loss, it has managed to outpace hiring and attrition. Data from SignalFire shows Anthropic is hiring engineers at a rate 2.68 times faster than it is losing them—outperforming OpenAI, Meta, and Google in this metric. This suggests the company is not only retaining talent but also expanding rapidly. Still, Meta has made inroads. Joel Pobar, a key engineer working on inference at Anthropic, left for Meta. But Amodei noted that some of his team members “wouldn’t even talk to Mark Zuckerberg,” highlighting a cultural resistance to Meta’s aggressive overtures. Founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI employees, Anthropic was built on the belief that AI should be developed responsibly. The company released a 22-page document in 2023 outlining its approach to safe and ethical AI growth. Amodei has been vocal about the potential for AI to displace millions of white-collar jobs, a view that contrasts with more optimistic stances from leaders like Sam Altman and Jensen Huang. Despite its focus on safety, Amodei insists Anthropic’s mission is broader. “I more want Anthropic to be a company where everyone is thinking about the public purpose, rather than a one-issue company that's focused on AI safety or the misalignment of AI systems,” he told Time in 2024. He believes the company has succeeded internally in fostering a diverse team united by a shared commitment to societal impact.