The battle for elite AI talent has reached new heights as tech giants deploy unprecedented financial resources to attract and retain top researchers.
According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta has been making "giant offers to a lot of people on our team," including "$100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year." Altman made these revelations on his brother Jack's podcast, where he claimed that "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that" despite the astronomical sums offered.
The competition reflects the industry's belief that a small group of elite researchers—what Altman has called "10,000× engineers"—can make outsized contributions to AI development. "While the scramble to attract top talent has always been a hallmark of the tech industry, since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, recruiting has escalated to professional athlete levels," according to Reuters reporting.
While Meta has successfully recruited some high-profile talent, including Jack Rae from Google DeepMind and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI, it has reportedly failed to poach OpenAI's Noam Brown and Google's Koray Kavukcuoglu. Meta's retention rate of 64% trails behind Anthropic's impressive 80% and Google DeepMind's 78%.
The astronomical compensation packages reflect both the scarcity of elite AI talent and the strategic importance companies place on AI development. Google DeepMind has reportedly offered top researchers $20 million per year compensation packages, while OpenAI's top researchers regularly receive over $10 million annually.
However, this talent war creates significant challenges for the industry. The concentration of expertise among a few dominant companies risks stifling innovation across the broader AI ecosystem. Additionally, the unsustainable cost spiral threatens long-term financial viability, especially as companies like Meta forecast spending $60-65 billion on AI capital expenditures in 2025 alone. Meanwhile, entry-level hiring in the tech industry is collapsing, creating a stark divide between the ultra-compensated elite and diminishing opportunities for newcomers.