Meta reportedly proposed a $1.25 billion deal over four years to Abel's founder for the recruitment of their AI talent. Despite an annual salary equivalent to $312 million, the individual allegedly turned down the offer.
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In the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI), the competition to secure top talent is fierce, and Meta Platforms is leading the charge with blockbuster signing bonuses.
Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta was attempting to swipe OpenAI's technical staff with $100 million signing bonuses. This news was met with a flurry of headlines, as the astronomical sums offered by Meta have become a hot topic in the AI industry.
Daniel Francis, founder of AI startup Abel, has been sharing updates about Meta's recruitment efforts and the large financial offers involved on social media. Francis, who made headlines in 2023 for his unconventional hiring by Elon Musk after pretending to be a disgruntled Twitter worker, has expressed incredulity about the remuneration offers from Meta, including a $1.25 billion offer for a four-year stint.
The reported $100 million signing bonuses from Meta are considered extreme in the AI field, but they are not entirely unprecedented. In 2021, Meta Platforms offered Ruoming Pang, formerly of Apple leading advanced foundation models, a compensation deal exceeding $200 million as part of their "Superintelligence Labs." Other top AI researchers from OpenAI moving to Meta reportedly received signing bonuses reportedly as high as $100 million.
Such extreme offers reflect a fierce competition among leading tech firms to secure talent capable of driving transformative AI technologies. In the current AI era, intellectual property (IP) is in people's heads, implying that the value lies in the ideas and knowledge of individuals rather than tangible assets. As a result, high offers can be seen as an "acquihire," implying that the value lies in the intellectual property (IP) of the individual.
Typical remuneration offers for high-caliber AI experts vary widely, ranging from strong six-figure salaries to multi-million dollar packages for elite talent in top tech companies. For mid- to senior-level AI engineers and specialists in the US, average annual salaries generally fall between $100,000 and $325,000, with AI engineers averaging around $160,000, machine learning engineers about $109,000, and data scientists approximately $65,000 to $160,000 depending on experience and role.
At the highest end of the spectrum, elite AI experts recruited by major technology giants can receive astronomical compensation packages, including signing bonuses and equity grants. The average total compensation for AI roles can reach roughly $324,000 per year, with a typical range from $163,000 to over $2 million in exceptional cases.
In summary, while standard industry salaries for AI experts are substantial but within hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, top-tier talent at the leading edge of AI research and deployment may command compensation deals that are hundreds of millions of dollars, combining salary, bonuses, and equity. This reflects the strategic importance and talent scarcity in the evolving AI landscape.
Artificial-intelligence (AI) researchers are at the center of a fierce competition among leading tech firms, such as Meta Platforms, who are offering extreme signing bonuses to secure top talent. The reported $100 million signing bonuses from Meta demonstrate the value tech companies place on intellectual property (IP) within the AI field, often seen as an "acquihire" strategy.
