AI giants wage $1M+ bidding war to woo top talent

The AI talent wars have reached unprecedented levels, with top researchers commanding compensation packages that rival professional athletes as companies fight to secure the specialized expertise needed for AI breakthroughs. This intense competition reveals how a small pool of elite researchers—estimated to be between a few dozen and a thousand people—has become the cornerstone of competitive advantage in the race to build leading AI models.

The big picture: Tech giants are treating AI researcher recruitment like a high-stakes chess game, strategically assembling teams with complementary expertise regardless of cost.

• OpenAI‘s top researchers regularly receive compensation packages exceeding $10 million annually, while Google DeepMind has reportedly offered packages as high as $20 million per year.
• Some OpenAI researchers received retention bonuses of $2 million and equity increases of $20 million, dramatically outpacing the average compensation for top engineers at big tech companies ($281,000 in salary and $261,000 in equity).

What they’re saying: “The AI labs approach hiring like a game of chess,” explained Ariel Herbert-Voss, a former OpenAI researcher who now leads cybersecurity startup RunSybil.

• “They want to move as fast as possible, so they are willing to pay a lot for candidates with specialized and complementary expertise, much like the game pieces. They are like, do I want enough rooks? Enough knights?”

Beyond compensation: For many top researchers, financial packages aren’t the primary motivator in choosing where to work.

• Noam Brown, who helped develop OpenAI’s breakthroughs in complex math and science reasoning, revealed he chose OpenAI despite it “financially not [being] the best option,” prioritizing the company’s willingness to allocate resources toward his research interests.
• The courtship process for elite talent has become increasingly elaborate, with Brown describing being wooed through personal interactions with tech luminaries including lunch with Google founder Sergey Brin, poker at Sam Altman’s home, and private jet visits from investors.

Key recruitment tactics: Companies are deploying founder-level engagement to secure top talent.

• Elon Musk personally makes calls to close candidates for his AI company xAI, according to sources familiar with the recruitment process.
• The direct involvement of founders and CEOs signals how critical these individual contributors are viewed to company success in the competitive AI landscape.