Mark Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla Chan reveals what AI researchers value more than big salaries

Priscilla Chan , Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg ’s wife, recently revealed her secret recruiting pitch to lure top talent. Chan is co-founder of the nonprofit organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Speaking on the Core Memory podcast hosted by Ashlee Vance, she said that while tech companies continue to offer massive compensation packages, CZI is focused on providing researchers with the tools they need instead. “The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs. You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from,” Priscilla Chan said.

Her comments come as Meta’s Superintelligence Labs keeps hiring top AI talent with eight-figure salaries and a goal of managing 1.3 million GPUs by the end of 2025.

During the podcast, she revealed that the organization now has about 1,000 advanced GPUs and plans to add more so that scientists can pursue cutting-edge work—even if the nonprofit can't match tech industry salaries.

Chan revealed that CZI has shifted its priorities to what she called a “science-first philanthropy,” with major efforts focused on biomedical discovery. The nonprofit, she said, continues to build advanced infrastructure to support research, aiming to make scientific breakthroughs more accessible.

Chan emphasized that while they can’t match Big Tech’s paychecks, CZI hopes to offer the next best thing: top-tier computing power dedicated to science.

“Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do,” Chan tells candidates. She added, “Pay is obviously important, yet we cannot compete with tech companies on this.”

Mark Zuckerberg on techies joining Meta for big salaries

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that top AI researchers are joining Meta only for the massive paychecks, revealing that the major factor drawing towards them is the unmatched compute power autonomy.

In an interview with The Information, Zuckerberg emphasised that the unparalleled compute power and the unique opportunity to build "superintelligence” are the reasons why AI researchers are joining the company.

Recently, we witnessed an aggressive recruitment drive from Meta, with some reports citing offers in the hundreds of millions of dollars to poach AI talent from Apple, OpenAI and Google DeepMind. These figures and rapid hiring made by Meta fuelled speculation of an unprecedented talent war, where financial gains reign supreme.