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AI talent wars are all about keeping top researchers

How 🤯 the AI talent wars have become:

  • OpenAI is now offering $4.4 billion in stock compensation to stop top researchers from jumping to Meta, which recently grabbed at least 8 OpenAI engineers in a week. One of them, Trapit Bansal, is a big name in AI reasoning. Meta’s doing this because its own AI projects hit roadblocks - so it switched to a "buy or poach" strategy after failing to acquire key startups.

  • Apple just lost Ruoming Pang, who led their foundation models team, to Meta too - reportedly for tens of millions per year. That could trigger more exits from Apple’s AI group.

Meta’s now launched a new unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs, filled with top talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and more. Sam Altman claims Meta offered nine-figure bonuses (some sources say that’s actually true).

The real AI race right now is keeping the best minds from walking out the door. 🧐

AI talent wars are all about keeping top researchers

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