This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
AI engineers working at Tesla may have Sam Altman and OpenAI to thank for their pay raises.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that his company is increasing pay packages for those who work on its artificial intelligence engineering team. The pay raise, Musk said, was a response to OpenAI’s attempts to poach Tesla engineers.
Tesla is increasing the comp (based on progress milestones) of our AI engineering team
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024
“They have aggressively recruited Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in some cases,” Musk said in a post on X on Wednesday about OpenAI’s hiring efforts.
Musk made the remarks in response to an article by The Information published the same day. According to the report, Tesla machine learning scientist Ethan Knight is moving to join Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
“Ethan would be joining OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,” Musk wrote on X.
Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them.
They have aggressively recruited Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in some cases.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024
OpenAI representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside of normal business hours.
Competition for AI talent has heated up as tech companies race to become dominant players in the industry. In addition to offering attractive salaries, some Big Tech leaders have taken a personal touch when it comes to wooing engineers.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wrote personal emails to AI researchers at Google’s DeepMind, according to The Information. In fact, Zuckerberg’s Meta even offered jobs to candidates without conducting any interviews, the outlet reported.
It’s not just Zuckerberg who needs to make personal contacts. Google co-founder Sergey Brin had to personally call an employee who was thinking of leaving Google for OpenAI. According to The Information’s report, Brin made several promises to convince the employee to stay, including an offer of a higher salary.
“The AI talent war is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!” Moss She said on Wednesday.