Mark Zuckerberg’s Homemade Soup Gambit in the Fight for OpenAI Talent

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took recruiting to a personal level by cooking and hand-delivering soup to OpenAI employees he wanted to hire. OpenAI chief research officer Mark Chen shared the story on Ashlee Vance’s Core Memory podcast, calling it shocking at first. Chen said Zuckerberg targeted his team, but most held firm.

The Incident and OpenAI’s Side

Chen recounted how Zuckerberg showed up with homemade soup for people Meta was trying to poach. “Zuck actually went and hand-delivered soup to people that he was trying to recruit from us,” Chen said, per the podcast transcript covered by AOL. Meta went after half of Chen’s direct reports, but they all turned down the offers. Chen laughed about fighting back: he later delivered soup to Meta recruits himself, part of Silicon Valley’s ‘soup wars’.

OpenAI sees the raids as proof they’re ahead. “We’re always under attack,” Chen told Vance. “This is how I know we’re in the lead.” Rivals target OpenAI for its researchers who build leading models like those behind ChatGPT.

Why Soup? Meta’s Push in a Tight Talent Market

Top AI talent is rare. Databricks’ former AI VP Naveen Rao compared it to finding LeBron James—few people can build breakthrough large language models from scratch. Meta, spending about $10 billion a year on AI hires according to Chen on the Benzinga report, has been the most aggressive against OpenAI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in June Meta dangled $100 million signing bonuses, though top talent stayed, except ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao, who later joined Meta’s Superintelligence Lab.
Zuckerberg personally messaged candidates and offered deals up to $1.5 billion equity, like to Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Andrew Tulloch, who said no.
Meta still landed over 50 researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Apple with nine-figure packages, plus Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer via a $14 billion equity deal.

The soup fits Meta’s hands-on approach amid rumors of paused AI hiring after a blitz, as detailed in DNyuz.

Smart Strategy or Gimmick?

It shows Zuckerberg’s commitment. Cooking soup beats cold emails. Chen admitted it could work “in their own way,” and OpenAI copied it. But results were mixed: no luck with Chen’s core team, and OpenAI calls Meta’s efforts “largely unsuccessful” at the top. Meta poached some, proving cash and equity work better than broth. In a war where OpenAI makes the stars, personal gestures grab attention but don’t always seal deals, as OfficeChai recapped from Chen’s account.