According to Business Insider, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Mark Chen, recently revealed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally hand-delivered homemade soup to an OpenAI employee in an attempt to recruit them. Chen discussed the incident on the “Core Memory” podcast, calling it “shocking” at the time. He also noted that Meta has tried to recruit half of his direct reports and that OpenAI co-creator Shengjia Zhao later joined Meta. While Chen claims OpenAI has been good at retaining talent, he framed the aggressive poaching as a sign that his company is the leader in the AI field, stating rivals “want our expertise” and “our vision.”
Soup and Superintelligence
Look, the image of a billionaire CEO showing up at your door with a pot of soup is just bizarre. It’s also kind of genius in a weird, overly personal way. Here’s the thing: when you’re fighting over a pool of talent that’s been compared to finding “LeBron James,” you pull out all the stops. Free lunches and big signing bonuses are one thing. A homemade gesture from the boss himself? That’s a different level of courtship. Chen laughed it off and even said OpenAI has “returned the favor” with its own soup deliveries to Meta staff. So now we have a cold war, but with lukewarm broth. It’s a perfect, slightly ridiculous symbol for how desperate and intimate this talent scramble has become.
The Real Stakes
But let’s be clear. This isn’t really about soup. It’s about what Chen said next: “This is how I know we’re in the lead.” His logic is that everyone is trying to hire from OpenAI because they have the vision and the star-making power. And he’s not wrong. When Sam Altman says Meta was throwing around potential $100 million offers, you know the financial stakes are astronomical. The belief is that only a small group of people on the planet can truly push the boundaries of foundational AI models. Companies aren’t just hiring an engineer; they’re trying to buy a piece of the philosophical blueprint and the practical know-how that built ChatGPT. That’s a priceless commodity.
A Persistent Siege
Chen’s comment that “We’re always under attack” is telling. It frames OpenAI not just as a company, but as a fortress under constant siege. And Meta has been the most persistent attacker. They have the compute, the capital, and now, with their open-source advocacy, a compelling philosophical counter-argument to OpenAI’s more guarded approach. Poaching isn’t just about filling a seat; it’s a way to directly weaken a competitor’s core asset—its collective brain trust. So, will these soup runs and nine-figure offers actually work in the long run? For some individuals, absolutely. But it also seems to be hardening OpenAI’s internal culture. Nothing builds “us vs. them” morale like seeing the other side’s CEO at your doorstep with a casserole.
