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Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been in a long-running dispute over generative artificial intelligence, and while the jury is still out on whether or not this technology is a bubble ready to burst, we can say one thing for sure: employees at both companies They are achieving it in a big way.
a new report of Business Insider Information published today shows that both Musk’s xAI and Altman’s OpenAI are paying handsomely to acquire the key talent they need to win. The report analyzes the salaries of engineers at both startups using publicly available visa application data that companies must submit to hire foreign workers. The data includes job titles and salaries, and shows that Musk’s fervent desire to beat OpenAI has done nothing but put more money in engineers’ pockets.
According to the data, Insider business information found that xAI and OpenAI respectively pay their employees 37% and 87% above the prevailing industry wage, respectively. The prevailing wage is defined by the Department of Labor as the average wage paid to workers in particular occupations within a defined geographic area.
xAI only has around 100 employees at the moment and has submitted visa applications for 10 roles, with the lowest paid engineer receiving $250,000 and the highest paid $500,000. One xAI employee, a lead machine learning engineer, was paid almost double the government-defined prevailing wage. OpenAI has thousands of employees with salaries ranging from $145,000 to $530,000. The salary range is wider there, in part because OpenAI has many more administrative employees.
None of this new data should be terribly surprising. The entire tech industry is going through a massive AI hype cycle, and every company needs to spread the buzzword to please investors.
Add to that the history between Musk and Altman. The first is a jilted lover who resigned from his position at OpenAI over divergent views, only for the company to become a global sensation just a few years later. It’s like breaking up with a girl only to have her glow up years later.
Musk has raised billions of dollars to try to win it back, creating his own competing AI and chatbot company in the form of Grok that he said would produce the most free-speech chatbot of all. He attached it to X to somehow also save the purchase of that company for 44 billion dollars. Between the two companies, more than 50 billion dollars have been invested; This is a big change for Musk. It would be a big blow to his ego if xAI and his chatbot Grok failed.
Musk is also using the courts to try to win, suing OpenAI in a bid to prevent it from becoming a for-profit company. OpenAI was founded by Musk and Altman as a nonprofit focused on AI safety, but the company continually needs cash to fuel its ambitions, and investors won’t want to pony up much more if it remains a nonprofit. complicated. While Musk is correct that he provided the initial funds for the express purpose of creating a public benefit, the emails revealed in court also show that he pushed the idea of becoming a for-profit company years ago specifically so that it would benefit him. easier to raise funds. money. This lawsuit, then, is really just an attempt to stop OpenAI.
As part of the lawsuit, Musk has said that OpenAI is using exorbitant salaries in order to stifle competition. Everyone in tech seems to be a free market maximalist until they’re not.
