Big Tech's AI hiring spree triggers million-dollar paycheques, sparks overseas talent hunt in Silicon Valley

Time of India

12 hours ago

Salaries surge as competition heats up
Meta's AI Push After Llama 4 Disappointment
AI roles outpace traditional engineering pay
Researchers value mission over money
European talent gains attention
In the latest escalation of Silicon Valley's AI talent race, major technology firms like Meta and OpenAI are offering multi-million-dollar pay packages to attract and retain top artificial intelligence researchers, according to reporting by the Financial Times.OpenAI has informed employees it is working on 'creative ways to recognise and reward top talent,' following recent exits to competitors. The company's internal discussions follow CEO Sam Altman's revelation that Meta has made $100 million sign-on offers to some of OpenAI's top engineers.Citing industry recruiters and job movement data, the FT has reported that pay packages for senior AI scientists have surged to between $3 million and $7 million, with some individuals earning over $10 million annually. This marks a 50% increase from 2022, and far surpasses pay levels for software engineers without AI experience.'It has just become manically more hyper intense over the past few years, to the point where it feels like certain players are willing to do anything or whatever it takes to bring that talent into the organisation,' said Kyle Langworthy, a partner at AI recruitment firm Riviera Partners, in an interview with the FT.The competition intensified after Meta's large language model Llama 4 received criticism for underperforming in reasoning and coding benchmarks. Meta has since invested $15 billion in Scale AI and brought on co-founder Alexandr Wang to lead a new team focused on 'superintelligence'.After recent staff departures, OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen wrote in an internal memo: 'It felt as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.' He also alleged that Meta was attempting to 'take advantage' of OpenAI's scheduled break to push offers onto its employees. 'We've been more proactive than ever before, we're recalibrating comp, and we're scoping out creative ways to recognise and reward top talent,' he said. The memo was first reported by Wired.According to Harrison Clarke, a tech recruitment firm cited by the FT, compensation for mid-to-senior AI research scientists at large tech companies now ranges from $500,000 to $2 million, up from $400,000 to $900,000 in 2022.Levels, a financial package tracking site, shows Meta offering between $186,000 and $3.2 million to AI engineers, while OpenAI's range is $212,000 to $2.5 million — though its median pay is higher. In comparison, senior software engineers without AI backgrounds typically earn $180,000 to $220,000.However, recruiters say that AI researchers often care more about research leadership and mission than salary. 'There's always a risk, if you end up in a Meta, you're not going to be doing the level of work that you might do at a DeepMind or an OpenAI, or an Anthropic,' said Firas Sozan, CEO of Harrison Clarke.The high cost of hiring in Silicon Valley is also affecting smaller firms. Riviera's Langworthy told the FT, 'It can be extremely challenging to hire your AI, engineering, and product team when you're a lesser-known company.'Open-source startup Hugging Face is now turning to Europe for AI talent. 'If you take one software engineer in the Bay Area right now, you can have three to four people of roughly the same level in Europe,' said Thomas Wolf, co-founder of Hugging Face.German AI startup Aleph Alpha, which has expanded its team sixfold in one year, told the FT that job candidates increasingly seek research freedom, publication rights, and impact-driven work. CEO Jonas Andrulis said, 'Topics like sustainability, ethical alignment, and solving real-world problems also come up more often,' adding that their growth reflects 'something money alone can't buy: belief in a mission.'