The figures put forward by Sam Altman give vertigo
He said that several Openai employees have received proposals from Meta, with packages exceeding $ 100 million. “” “Some have been offered signing bonuses of 25 to 100 million dollars, and total compensations which can reach or exceed this amount each year“, He details. For a senior engineer or researcher, these amounts are unprecedented in the technological industry, even in the Silicon Valley where wages are already stratospheric.
These offers would come from the new IA department of Meta, the “superintelligence” laboratory launched with great fanfare in early 2024, which Mark Zuckerberg wants to position in spearhead against Openai, Anthropic or Google Deepmind. The ambition displayed: Building a general artificial intelligence (AG) in the next five years, by mobilizing the best world talents … and the financial means that go with it.
Meta muscle her game after recruiting the CEO of Scale Ai
This offensive is part of a context of great recomposition of the living forces in the sector. Meta recently had a coup by recruiting Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale Ai, a key company in the training of IA models. This major socket has obviously marked a turning point: since then, Meta no longer hides its muscular methods to attract the most coveted profiles. In parallel, the group would invest between $ 14 and $ 15 billion a year in its IA strategy, according to estimates by the Financial Times.
For Sam Altman, these astronomical amounts question the corporate culture they translate. He admits that these offers are enticing, but stresses that none of the most critical profiles of Openai has so far been given to the sirens of Menlo Park. “” “Our best elements have remained, and I am proud of the culture that we have built. We cannot compete financially with these proposals, but people remain because they believe in our mission ”he said.
The episode illustrates how the artificial intelligence sector has become a fierce confrontation field, where each highly qualified individual is courted as a high -level football player. Large groups no longer hesitate to draw sums worthy of venture capital to capture some strategic brains.
These dynamics are likely to strengthen the imbalances between tech giants, capable of getting billions out for a few lines of code, and the other actors, startups, university laboratories or non -profit structures, which are struggling to follow.
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