Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su has publicly challenged Mark Zuckerberg's approach to talent acquisition. At the height of the AI talent war, she made it clear that she would not follow Meta's Zuckerberg in offering $100 million annual salaries to poach talent. Her core message is straightforward—money is important, but it's not the most important thing.

This legendary CEO, who led Advanced Micro Devices from near-bankruptcy to a hundred-billion-dollar market cap, particularly emphasized one point: employees should not feel like they're just cogs in a machine. These remarks immediately sparked heated discussions in Silicon Valley, especially as the compensation battle in the AI field has reached absurd levels.

**Mission Matters More Than Money**

Su's talent philosophy can be summarized in one question: "Do you want to be part of our mission?" In her view, compensation certainly needs to be competitive and should be "in the zip code"—an interesting phrase she uses to mean that company-offered compensation should be within roughly the same range as competitors, reaching competitive market salary levels.

However, what truly attracts top talent is getting them to believe in what the company is doing. Su repeatedly emphasized this point in interviews. She wants to attract people who are eager to make important contributions in the technology field and can drive the company's future development blueprint.

More critically, she believes that offering disproportionately massive compensation packages to new employees is unfair to existing employees who work hard for lower pay. Advanced Micro Devices' success depends on the entire team's efforts, not on any single "star employee," and such practices would destroy company culture.

Anthropic's CEO strongly agrees with this viewpoint and puts it more directly: "Meta is trying to buy something that cannot be bought—alignment with the mission." Anthropic adopts a systematic job level and compensation system without special individual negotiations to maintain fairness.

Interestingly, data seems to support this philosophy. Over the past two years, Anthropic, which insists on not engaging in sky-high talent poaching, has maintained an employee retention rate of 80%, while big-spending Meta and OpenAI only achieved 64%.

To understand why Su chose to speak out, we need to look at how crazy the current AI talent market has become. By 2033, the AI industry is expected to reach $4.8 trillion, and this enormous pie has completely inflamed major tech giants.

Meta's Zuckerberg has led this competition, directly offering $100 million compensation packages to poach talent from competitors like OpenAI. Some top AI researchers have received offers as high as $250 million. A Singaporean AI engineer recently posted about receiving a job offer from OpenAI on social media and almost immediately received a poaching email from Meta. This practice of direct headhunting through "cold emails" has become industry standard.

Zuckerberg is indeed unrestrained when it comes to spending money. Beyond offering sky-high salaries to AI talent, even his personal security costs have set Silicon Valley records. According to recent analysis, Meta's security budget for Zuckerberg in 2024 reached $27 million, up $3 million from the previous year. What does this mean? The combined security costs for CEOs of Apple, NVIDIA, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Palo Alto Networks is still $7 million less than Zuckerberg alone.

In comparison, NVIDIA's security budget for Jensen Huang is $3.5 million, Apple's for Tim Cook is $1.4 million, and Google's for Sundar Pichai is $6.8 million. This huge gap somewhat reflects Zuckerberg and Meta's consistent style of "throwing money around."

**From Near-Bankruptcy to Hundred-Billion Market Cap: Su Has the Credibility to Say This**

Su's boldness in making these statements is inseparable from her past experience. When she joined Advanced Micro Devices in 2012, the company was on the brink of collapse. AMD was losing ground in battles against both Intel and NVIDIA, carrying $2.2 billion in debt with stock prices falling below $2. Intel's CEO even publicly stated that AMD could be removed from the competitor list.

After Su took over as CEO in 2014, she pulled Advanced Micro Devices back from the cliff through a series of bold technical decisions and strategic planning. By fiscal 2024, AMD achieved record revenue of $25.8 billion, with data center business revenue of $12.6 billion, surging 94% year-over-year.

This comeback story itself has become Advanced Micro Devices' best recruiting advertisement. As Su said: "What we're trying to attract people to is exactly this journey."

Of course, saying no to sky-high talent poaching doesn't mean Advanced Micro Devices' compensation isn't competitive. Su herself is one of the highest-paid CEOs globally. According to latest disclosed data, her total 2024 fiscal year compensation was $31 million, with base salary increasing to $1.32 million starting July 1, 2025. Her latest equity award has a target value of $33 million, 75% of which is tied to company performance.

Other Advanced Micro Devices executives are also well-compensated. Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster received stock awards worth $10 million and an annual salary of $870,000. This approach of tying compensation to company growth perfectly validates Su's philosophy.

Advanced Micro Devices is accelerating its pursuit of NVIDIA in the AI chip field, with its latest MI300 series products gaining recognition from major clients like Microsoft and Meta. It appears that without relying on sky-high talent poaching, but rather on mission and growth opportunities, Advanced Micro Devices can still attract top talent.

As Su concluded in her interview: What would Zuckerberg think upon hearing this?