engineers with sports salaries

Imagine that a company offered you 100 million dollars to go to work with it. 100. Millions. That is precisely What Meta has offered several Openai engineers To sign. It is the demonstration of a unique phenomenon: right now in Silicon Valley, the engineers of AI are almost like sport superstars.

The Galactics of Technology. Sam Altman, OpenAi CEO, He counted In the podcast “UNCapped” how target had made those “gigantic offers” of work to several OpenAi engineers in which he offered bonuses of 100 million dollars to sign them. “I am very happy because at least for the moment none of our best engineers have accepted,” he said, which seems to confirm that even that obscene amount of money had managed to convince those OpenAi experts to change the side.

Talent War AI. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg seems to be desperate to get talent at all costs. Deedy DasMenlo Park Ventures manager, explained that despite offering annual salaries of two million dollars to their AI engineers, “continue to lose them in favor of OpenAi or Anthropic. The talent war is absolutely ridiculous.”

Desperate measures? Alberto Romero, author of the Newsletter The Algorithmic Bridge, He described These offers of an obscenity and analyzed the finish line, which in recent weeks is demonstrating serious problems not losing ground in the field of AI. Call 4 has been A small disasterand Metaai It does not seem to curdle at all even being part of WhatsApp or Instagram.

Restructuring and very risky investments. Zuckerberg is so concerned about the bad progress of his AI projects that He has activated his “Founder Mode” To put in charge of that effort. Has restructured the organization of Meta and its divisions dedicated to AI, but above all it has made an exceptional decision: pay 14.3 billion dollars for a 49% participation in the (not well known) Scaleai. Not so much for that participation, in reality, but to sign Alexandr Wang, his CEOwhich will now direct the division of AI and that also, Romero points out, thus becomes “the most expensive spy in history.” Scaleai works labeling AI data for companies such as OpenAi or Anthropic, and the question here is whether the knowledge you have acquired about these companies will end up being helpful or not. In The Information They point What a goal wants to hire Nat Friedman –Exceiver of github“And Daniel Gross -which worked in Apple’s division and co -founded Safe Superintelligence.

Beyond money. The obsession of AI companies for winning that particular battle has made the best experts in this field become quoted figures for companies. Noam Brown, one of OpenAi researchers, He explained in Reuters How in 2023 several greats of technology “courted” him. He ate with Sergey Brin, co -founder of Google, played poker with Sam Altman and received the visit in Jet private from an investor. Two other candidates told how Elon Musk personally called them to work in XAI. In the end Brown decided on OpenAi for both the people who worked there and for the work they were doing. “In fact, it was not the best option I had,” he confessed.

Millionaire salaries. And the companies that have the talent want to retain it. Openai offered bonuses of two million dollars and additional shares worth $ 20 million or more if they stayed in the company, two sources confessed to Reuters. Apparently some employees showed their intention to go to work for the new Ilya Sutskever company, Safe Superintelligence. The best Openai researchers receive bonus packages of 10 million dollars a year, these sources also highlight Reuters. In Deepmind these packages become 20 million dollars a year.

Much demand, very little supply. Fortune estimated that there are about 1,000 true great researchers around the world, and that does not only have some companies to convince them to work for them. As the publication points out, money matters and the project matters, but personal ties also matter. When Murati looks He left Openai To create Your own startuphe took with her 19 employees of the firm, including one of his co -founders, John Schulman.

The new sport superstars in Silicon Valley. All technological, large or small companies drive this phenomenon. Apple has managed to sign several Google employees, although some like Ian Goodfellow ended up returning to Deepmind. And those who do not go to a great company, create one. It has happened with Sutskever or Murati, which have already received multimillion -dollar investment rounds. They are the new superstars of the other sport. That of artificial intelligence.

Image | Techcrunch | Goal

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