Open AI wants Google Researchers, even if it has to pay millions

The artificial intelligence talent war between OpenAI and Google is intensifying as OpenAI tries to lure top AI researchers from Google with multimillion dollar pay packages. OpenAI plans to triple its valuation to over $80 billion through an employee share sale, so it is telling researchers who join now they can benefit from the upcoming increase.

What’s going on here?

OpenAI is aggressively recruiting top AI talent from Google with heavy paychecks.

What does that mean?

In the “Game of AI Thrones”, you need many houses to support you. The GPU house is often talked about but Open AI is (and has been) looking at the talent house. It is offering senior researchers from Google pay packages worth around $5-10 million in stock compensation. The rumour is that OpenAI is guaranteeing them huge paydays if they get in before OpenAI's valuation spikes from $27 billion to over $80 billion.

Why should I care?

Open AI already includes many top researchers who were previously at Google. The transformer architecture was created by researchers at Google. Open AI has been “attracting” talent like a super magnet and if this move ends up shifting more researchers to their side, it’ll be a hard game for Google to keep pace.