AI Talents Become Symptoms, Salaries Up To Hundreds Of Billions Per Year!

JAKARTA - Competition to master artificial intelligence (AI) in Silicon Valley is now turning to new terrain: the race for superstar researchers.

Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, efforts to attract and maintain the best talent have increased dramatically. This resembles competition in professional sports, according to more than a dozen sources involved in the AI researchers recruitment process.

"AI laboratories recruit like chess games," said Ariel Herbert-Voss, CEO of cybersecurity startup Run Sybil and former OpenAI researchers. "They want to move as quickly as possible, so they are willing to pay dearly for candidates with complementary special skills. They like to think: do I have enough forts? Enough horses?"

Companies like OpenAI and Google are trying to maintain their advantage by recruiting individual contributors (ICs) researchers who can determine the success or failure of an AI model.

One of them is Noam Brown, the researcher behind OpenAI's breakthrough in mathematical reasoning and complex science. While exploring job opportunities in 2023, he was invited to lunch by Google founder Sergey Brin, playing strip at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and was even picked up by investors on private jets. Two sources said Elon Musk stepped in directly contacting the candidate to strengthen his xAI team.

But Brown chose to stay at OpenAI. 'Financially, that's not the best choice,' he said. "But what's more important for me is the commitment to the projects I'm interested in."

Even so, financial offers from various companies remain enormous. According to seven sources owned by Reuters, a number of researchers considering joining Ilya Sutskever's new company (former OpenAI chief scientist) named SSI, were offered a retention bonus of US$2 million (Rp32.8 billion) and an increase in equity of up to US$20 million (Rp328 billion) if it persists at OpenAI, even though it is only a year. OpenAI and SSI declined to comment.

Another OpenAI researcher who was teased by Eleven Labs even received a bonus of more than US$1 million (Rp16.4 billion) to stay. Some of the main researchers at OpenAI reportedly receive a total compensation of more than US$10 million (Rp164 billion) per year.

Meanwhile, Google DeepMind is also not left behind. The company offers compensation of up to 20 million per US dollar of the year, speeds up its share-vesting period from four years to three, and provides additional share grants beyond the normal cycle. Google declined to comment.

In comparison, according to the Comprehensive.io compensation tracking site, top engineers at major tech companies generally earn around US$281,000 (Rp4.5 billion) per year in the form of salaries and US$261,000 (Rp4.2 billion) in stock.

Talenta10.000x

So far, Silicon Valley has known the term 10x engineer which is ten times greater than the average. But in the world of AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calls these elite researchers 10,000x, because of its enormous contribution to the development of large language models.

Their numbers are very limited between tens to thousands of people worldwide, eight sources said. They are considered to be able to determine the success of future AI technology.

The competition has been getting hotter since Mira Murati, former CTO OpenAI, founded a new AI startup. She has recruited 20 former co-workers from OpenAI, and now her team has grown to 60 people. Despite not releasing the product, Murati is closing early-stage funding (seed round) with a record value, based on the strength of her team. Representative declined to comment.

Due to the limited number of top talents, the company is also implementing a creative recruitment strategy. The company Zeki Data, for example, uses a sports industry-style approach like in the Moneyball film to find hidden talent. They found that companies like Anthropic recruited people with theoretical and computational, quantum physics backgrounds. Anthrop declined to comment.

"I have an extraordinary mathematician in my team who probably wouldn't have entered this field if it weren't for the fast progress that's happening right now," said Sébastien Bubeck, who left his position as VP of research for GenAI at Microsoft to join OpenAI. Now we see the entry of talent from various disciplines into the world of AI. And some of them are really very intelligent they make real differences.