Mark Zuckerberg is paying NFL-style salaries to secure the few experts who can train large foundation models, but not every founder believes those recruits guarantee success.

Lovable CEO Anton Osika says Meta's META pursuit of "these 10 people that know everything about how to train foundation models" will not decide the future of AI, telling Harry Stebbings on his podcast "20VC with Harry Stebblings" released Tuesday, "They wouldn't perform as well as the engineers in my team, doing what we are doing."

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Meta has offered signing bonuses worth up to $100 million to secure top talent, Business Insider says, creating one of the most expensive recruitment drives in Silicon Valley history. Yet, Osika is unfazed, telling Stebblings that Lovable is chasing a "very different type of talent," talking about engineers who thrive in adaptable teams rather than those optimized for training giant models.

Rather than pegging value to a résumé, Osika focuses on potential. "If I knew who the perfect engineers to hire were, I could maybe step up our compensation bands to get exactly those. But I don't know who the best people are," he said. The approach is less about matching Meta's financial firepower and more about identifying who can evolve within Lovable's culture.

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The AI arms race has created debates across the industry. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the "Uncapped with Jack Altman" podcast, released in June, that Meta's spending is "crazy," arguing that pay alone cannot buy dedication to a mission. "The strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture," Altman said.

Osika aligns with that critique. He explained that his process relies on conversations that reveal curiosity and dynamism. "If I talk to someone and I learn a lot of things from them, and I notice that my conversation is very dynamic and exciting, that is usually a very good indicator," he told Stebblings. For Lovable, adaptability and energy matter more than eye-catching salary packages, Osika added.

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Advanced Micro Devices AMD CEO Lisa Su echoed this philosophy in a recent interview with Wired, saying she would never consider offering a billion-dollar package to a potential hire.

"I think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly, it’s not necessarily the most important thing when you’re attracting talent," Su said. She added that while firms must stay "in the ZIP code of those numbers," the real draw is belief in the company's mission.

For Osika, the winning edge is not in nine-figure bonuses but in people who are "moldable," collaborative, and hungry to grow with the mission. That philosophy sets Lovable apart from Zuckerberg's high-stakes bidding war and reframes how the next generation of AI teams may actually be built.

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