Chaos at OpenAI adds fuel to AI talent poaching war

Salesforce was one of the first to make general offers

With most OpenAI With employees threatening to walk away after Sam Altman is fired, the company's competitors may be missing out on the biggest opportunity of the year: poaching.

Καθώς το χάος στο OpenAI και στη Microsoft, όπου ηγείται τώρα ο Altman, συνεχίζεται, εταιρείες όπως η Anthropic, η Mozilla or Patronus AI could be attractive to employees looking for stability. The result; OpenAI employees – a group of sought-after artificial intelligence experts – could disperse to other companies or follow Altman.

"This talent is the jewel of the organization," Tammy Madsen, professor of management at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, told TechCrunch. "This is an area where there's a big gap in what companies see they need in terms of AI talent and applied AI and what they see in terms of what's available."

Case in point, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who earlier this afternoon posted on X that “Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has submitted their full cash and stock resignation to OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese. Send me your resume directly at [email protected]. Einstein is the most successful AI trading platform that completes 1 trillion trades prediction and creation this week! Join the Business Revolution in Artificial Intelligence.”

Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez as well posted on X a link to his company's career page and wrote that the company was looking to hire “Machine Learning Technical Staff Members”.

Μπορεί να είναι δύσκολο για οποιαδήποτε εταιρεία να προσελκύσει υπαλλήλους του OpenAI, ακόμη και αν τα πακέτα αποζημίωσης είναι εντυπωσιακά υψηλά. Ο Άλτμαν έχει επιμεληθεί προσωπικά μερικά από τα καλύτερα ταλέντα της εταιρείας, σύμφωνα με διάφορες αναφορές στα μέσα informationς και αναρτήσεις στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης.

AI skills are in 'critical demand'

As long as AI jobs remain in high demand, expect companies to keep these offers coming.

Madsen pointed out McKinsey Technology Trends Statistics From 2021 to 2022, job postings in areas considered tech trends increased by 15% amid a 13% decline in global job postings overall. Within that year, applied artificial intelligence and next-generation software development together posted nearly 1 million jobs.

All of this means that "this particular skill base is in critical demand," Madsen said. Which also makes this a time that many of OpenAI's big competitors "would see as a great opportunity to build their AI talent pool," he added.

Ο Διευθύνων Σύμβουλος της Frame AI, Τζορτζ Ντέιβις, είπε στο TechCrunch μέσω Email ότι περίμενε «άμεσο αντίκτυπο όσον αφορά τα μεγάλα ταλέντα που έρχονται στην αγορά» και επίσης βλέπει ήδη συνεχείς συζητήσεις για τη στρατολόγηση.

"This weekend's drama made it clear that a lot of the AI ​​talent is also interested in making AI safe," Davis said.

Pros and cons of joining Microsoft

Some OpenAI employees will likely join Altman at Microsoft, where he and co-founder Greg Brockman will lead a "new advanced AI research team," according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

But even those most loyal to Altman may have to weigh the downside of working for a large publicly traded company, which, while well-funded, may have more red tape and regulations to navigate.

"They've lost their champions," she said, referring to the employees who lost Altman and Brockman. “They don't trust the board to work in their best interest. They have an interim CEO now who has said, "we need stability and success," but he also plans to make major changes. So if you're an employee sitting there trying to decide, 'Should I move to Google? Moving to Microsoft? Or should I stay here and wait for it?'' Initially, there is a lot of confusion for them to understand what they will be comfortable with."

Madsen notes that as OpenAI employees figure out what they're doing today and what they'll be doing tomorrow, little is known about what this disruption means in terms of how much of the pace of development has been or will be disrupted by these events.

Although there could be a silver lining. TechCrunch reporter Tim De Chant wrote that all this disruption could very well "sow the seeds of the next generation of AI startups."