AI talent war intensifies as Meta and OpenAI offer multimillion-dollar salaries to top researchers

CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered sign-on bonuses as high as $100 million to lure away OpenAI engineers. (Courtesy: Reuters photo)

The global race for artificial intelligence dominance is fuelling a dramatic surge in salaries for top AI talent, with tech giants like Meta and OpenAI offering unprecedented compensation packages in an aggressive battle for the best minds in the field, the Financial Times reported.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently told staff it was seeking “creative ways to recognise and reward top talent,” following high-profile staff exits and increased poaching efforts from rivals, particularly Meta. CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered sign-on bonuses as high as $100 million to lure away OpenAI engineers.

Across Silicon Valley, senior AI research scientists now command salaries significantly above their peers in software engineering, with total compensation ranging from $3 million to $7 million — and in some cases, exceeding $10 million. That marks an approximate 50% rise in average pay since 2022, according to tech recruiters.

Kyle Langworthy, a partner at executive search firm Riviera Partners, described the hiring climate as “manically more hyper intense,” with some companies willing to do “whatever it takes” to secure top researchers.

Meta ramps up recruitment after underwhelming model launch

Meta’s renewed push to recruit AI experts follows the underperformance of its latest large language model, Llama 4, which failed to impress on coding and reasoning benchmarks. The company has since invested $15 billion in data-labelling start-up Scale AI and brought on its co-founder Alexandr Wang to lead a new “superintelligence” unit.

OpenAI, facing losses to competitors, responded by giving employees a week off to recharge. In an internal memo, chief research officer Mark Chen expressed concern over Meta’s tactics during the break, saying it felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.” He also noted the company was working to recalibrate pay and develop new incentives to retain talent.

Sky-high wages widen industry gaps

New data from Levels.fyi shows Meta offers AI engineers packages between $186,000 and $3.2 million, while OpenAI’s range starts higher — from $212,000 to $2.5 million — with a higher median salary overall. By contrast, senior software engineers without AI experience typically earn $180,000 to $220,000, underscoring the steep premium for AI expertise.

But money isn’t everything, say recruiters. “Researchers are incentivised by the type of work they’re doing,” said Firas Sozan, CEO of recruitment firm Harrison Clarke. “There’s always a risk at a company like Meta that you won’t be doing the level of cutting-edge research possible at OpenAI or DeepMind.”

Start-ups turn to Europe for affordable talent

As compensation in the US continues to rise, smaller AI firms are looking to Europe for cost-effective hiring. Thomas Wolf, co-founder of open-source platform Hugging Face, said one engineer in the Bay Area can cost the same as three to four in Europe. German start-up Aleph Alpha has grown its team six-fold in a year, with candidates increasingly seeking mission-driven roles focused on research freedom, ethical alignment and social impact.

Founder Jonas Andrulis said their growth proves “something money alone can’t buy: belief in a mission.”

As the AI arms race continues, the pressure on companies to balance competitive pay with meaningful work and long-term purpose is growing — reshaping how the tech industry defines and attracts its most valuable resource: human intelligence.