Microsoft is going after Meta‘s AI talent.

The software giant has compiled a list of its most-wanted Meta engineers and researchers and is starting a new process intended to make offers more competitive, including a mandate to match Meta’s compensation for top talent, according to insiders and internal documents viewed by Business Insider.

Microsoft recently reported blowout earnings, sending its market valuation toward $4 trillion, thanks in large part to excitement around generative AI. Microsoft needs to lure top AI engineers and researchers to keep that success going. The company has cut thousands of employees this year but has insisted its head count will remain flat, suggesting significant hiring plans.

Matching Meta offers is no small feat. The social media company has been making nine-figure offers for top AI talent. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said Meta is offering $100 million signing bonuses to his engineers, and Meta has recently hired AI researchers with pay packages as high as $250 million.

Microsoft documents viewed by BI show the software company is making multimillion-dollar offers, and two people familiar with the process say multimillion-dollar on-hire bonuses for AI talent are becoming more common.

Microsoft AI, a team run by the former Google DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, and CoreAI, another Microsoft group overseen by the former Meta engineering boss Jay Parikh, have special recruiting teams to help with competitive offers, these people said. They asked not to be identified discussing sensitive, private matters.

Parikh’s organizational chart, recently viewed by BI, shows that much of his roster includes executives with whom he overlapped at Meta.

A spreadsheet of Microsoft’s most-wanted Meta employees lists individuals by name, location, and position and includes tabs for teams and positions that Microsoft is targeting, such as Reality Labs, GenAI Infrastructure, and Meta AI Research. The spreadsheet is being shared among hiring managers on certain AI teams, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Microsoft has started a new process for competitive offers, asking recruiters to mark candidates as “critical AI talent,” which gets the attention of higher-ups who respond with Microsoft’s top offer within 24 hours.

Documents viewed by BI show how that process works, such as providing “offer rationale” about the candidate’s AI skills and experience, using a private “compensation modeler” to come up with a bespoke range for the candidate, and enlisting a compensation consultant.

The new process could help Microsoft compete with AI talent outside its traditional pay ranges.

BI recently published Microsoft’s internal pay guidelines for engineers and researchers. The highest compensation package includes $408,000 in salary, $1.9 million in on-hire stock awards, nearly $1.5 million in annual stock awards, and annual cash bonuses as high as 90%.

Those documents included an important carve-out for competitive situations, such as cases involving top AI talent, in which recruiters can seek approval for higher offers for exceptional candidates.

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