Division about to be sold off, retention bonus offer in hand, should I be worried about random people encouraging me to apply elsewhere?

Last week nearly half our division was laid off, and the rest of us were given retention bonus letters. The higher ups are telling us that the layoffs are to prepare us for an upcoming asset sale and there are a few prospective suitors already in the pipeline.

Some background: we build a software platform that is desirable in our field, and realistically to maintain and operate it a buyer would need most of the team that survived the layoffs. My position is a technical position with a focus on R&D to expand out our product offering (a new owner would need people with my expertise to grow the business and we are pretty expensive to train from scratch).

A manager from another team in our current company (their team is very similar to our team in skill set, but with a different focus) has endorsed me to people outside of the company who have since reached out to me encouraging me to apply for positions in their companies. I get the sense that they are looking for a referral bonus which doesn't really bother me, but I am also worried that the connection to my current company could come back to bite me. For example, if they find out I am actively seeking other opportunities should I be worried about getting laid off? Does that even make sense? I guess if they let me go then it would cost them more money than if I resigned, so maybe I shouldn't worry and should just go for it? I am a bit frazzled right now because of the job uncertainty and would appreciate any feedback from this community.