Techies quickly brush up on AI, here's the whopping amount OpenAI, Google and xAI are shelling out and it's in millions

Economic Times

22-05-2025

Since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, tech companies are fighting hard to hire top AI researchers, it's like a battle to get superstars, as per reports. Hiring in AI labs is like playing chess, each person is a strategic move, and companies want people with the right skills, says Ariel Herbert-Voss, ex-OpenAI researcher and CEO of RunSybil.
These top people are called 'ICs', and their work can decide a company's future. When Noam Brown, a top OpenAI researcher, was job hunting in 2023, he got lunch with Google founder Sergey Brin, poker game at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's house, and a private jet visit from a rich investor, as mentioned in the report by Reuters.
Even Musk, the Tesla boss and owner of xAI, is mesmerized by the researchers. So much so that he himself pitches his company and the job offer to these tech geeks. Noam Brown finally chose to stay at OpenAI because they supported his work, not just with money, but also people and computing power. He said it wasn't even the best financial offer, but doing meaningful work mattered more to him. Still, money is flowing big time, some top researchers at OpenAI were offered $2 million bonuses and $20 million in equity to stop them from leaving for SSI, a company by OpenAI's ex-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, says Reuters report. Full bonuses run in abundance among these rare breeds of researchers, with most of them required to stay just for a year to lap up the bonus paychecks. OpenAI researchers who got offers from Eleven Labs were given $1 million plus to stay. Many OpenAI researchers get over $10 million per year in total compensation, says reports.At Google DeepMind, researchers are being offered $20 million/year packages, extra equity grants outside normal cycles, and a stock vesting reduced to 3 years instead of 4, as per reports. In comparison, regular top tech engineers make around $280K in salary and another $260K in stock each year, way less than what star AI researchers are getting. In the AI world, there are only a few dozen to a thousand top AI researchers, very rare and super valuable, as mentioned in the report by Reuters.
These rare experts are believed to be behind major progress in large language models. Open AI supremo Sam Altman, in a post on his now X but then Twitter handle, in 2023, said that 10x engineers are cool, but 10,000x researchers are even better.Mira Murati, who used to be the chief tech officer at OpenAI, left the company in September and started her own AI company.* She was known for her leadership and ability to get things done at OpenAI. By February, she had already hired 20 people from OpenAI, and now her team is around 60 people strong. Even though her company doesn't have a product yet, it's about to raise a record-breaking seed funding round, mostly because of how strong her team is, as per the report by Reuters. Because good AI talent is so rare, companies are getting creative. A company called Zeki Data is using sports-style scouting methods like the 'Moneyball' movie to find under-the-radar AI talent. Other AI companies are hiring people with quantum computing experience.Sebastien Bubeck, who left Microsoft to join OpenAI, said AI is now attracting top talent from all fields, especially math. He told Reuters that some of these new people are super smart and really making a differenceQ1. Why are tech companies paying so much to AI researchers?Because great AI researchers are rare and can help companies build better AI faster.Q2. How is hiring in AI different from other tech jobs?In AI, hiring is super competitive and focused on just a few top experts who can make a big impact.