AI talent wars heat up as Tesla boosts pay for AI engineers to counter OpenAI’s poaching

The ongoing rivalry between Elon Musk and OpenAI has reached new heights, leaving Tesla in the middle of an all-out talent war. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Tesla is ramping up compensation for its AI talent, aiming to counter the aggressive recruitment tactics and hefty offers from OpenAI, in what Musk describes as the “craziest talent war” he’s witnessed.

Taking to his social media platform X, Musk aired his concerns, highlighting how Tesla is enhancing its pay scales amidst OpenAI’s aggressive poaching of its engineers with extravagant compensation packages.

Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them.

They have been aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in a few cases.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024

“The competition for AI engineers is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen,” Musk said, shedding light on the million-dollar-a-year salaries and accelerated stock-vesting plans being dangled by tech firms. Meanwhile, layoffs continue to plague other sectors of the tech industry.

Ethan is very talented, but “vision chief” would be overstating things.

There are over 200 excellent engineers in the Tesla AI/Autonomy team. Tesla’s pace of progress with autonomy is accelerating.

The talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024

Musk’s response stemmed from a report by The Information disclosing the departure of Tesla machine-learning scientist Ethan Knight to join Musk’s AI venture, xAI. “Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,” Musk revealed, with OpenAI yet to offer any comments on the matter.

The AI boom has ignited fierce competition in Silicon Valley, pitting startups against tech titans in a relentless pursuit to pioneer the next breakthrough. With lucrative compensation packages and poaching tactics on the rise, companies are vying for talent proficient in generative AI technologies, akin to those powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar humanlike bots.

Beyond the industry-wide scramble for top talent, Musk’s and Altman’s entangled history suggests a personal dimension to the poaching battles. Musk alleged that OpenAI has successfully lured away several Tesla engineers, prompting Tesla to bolster AI engineer salaries in a bid to fortify its defenses.

Notably, Musk’s own xAI has also been in the headlines for poaching Tesla engineers, including ML scientist Ethan Knight, who was originally destined for OpenAI. Adding fuel to the fire, reports surfaced of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta reaching out to Google DeepMind employees for recruitment purposes.

As the rivalry between Musk and OpenAI escalates, the billionaire recently initiated a lawsuit against the AI firm, signaling that this tech clash is far from over. As we reported last month, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman for “breach of contract” and abandonment of the original mission.

The “breach of contract” lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, contends that Altman and Brockman initially approached Musk with the vision of establishing an open-source, non-profit entity. However, Musk’s legal team argues that OpenAI’s shift towards profit-making ventures, particularly with the undisclosed development of GPT-4, its latest AI model, violates this fundamental agreement.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk. The AI startup started as a non-profit research institution aimed to pave the way for safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, in 2020, it transitioned into a commercial entity, marking a significant shift in its trajectory. Despite internal disruptions in November, including Altman’s temporary departure and subsequent return, the company remains at the forefront of the burgeoning AI market, spurred by the successful launch of ChatGPT in 2022.