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Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been arguing for a long time for the sake of artificial intelligence, and while the jury is still out on whether this technology is a blue chip waiting to emerge, we can say one thing for sure: The workers in both companies. they are hitting hard.
New report from Business Insider published today shows that both Musk’s xAI and Altman’s OpenAI are paying big bucks to get the top talent they need to succeed. The report examines the salaries of all entry-level engineers using publicly available information that companies must submit to hire foreign workers. The data includes positions and salaries, and shows that Musk’s desire to beat OpenAI has done little if not put more money in the pockets of engineers.
According to the data, Business Insider found that xAI and OpenAI respectively pay their employees 37% and 87% more than the salary they work for those companies. Prevailing wages are defined by the Department of Labor as the average wages paid to workers in particular occupations in a defined area.
xAI currently has about 100 employees and has issued visas for 10 positions with the lowest paid engineer earning $250,000 and the highest paid $500,000. One employee at xAI, a senior machine learning engineer, is paid almost twice the government-defined minimum wage. OpenAI has thousands of employees with salaries ranging from $145,000 to $530,000. The salary range is higher in part because OpenAI has more administrative staff.
None of this new data should come as too much of a surprise. All tech companies are going through a massive AI race, and every company needs to make a statement to impress investors.
Add to that the history between Musk and Altman. The former is a jilted fan who left his position at OpenAI due to differing opinions, only for the company to become world famous within a few years. It’s like breaking up with a girl only to have so much fun after so many years.
Musk has raised billions of dollars to try again to succeed, creating his own rival AI company and a chatbot in the form of Grok that he said will produce the most free chat of all. He is agreed with X to save another $44 billion to buy the company. Between the two projects, more than $50 billion has been invested – this is a big change for Musk. It would be a huge blow to his ego if xAI and his Grok chatbot were to fail.
Musk is also using the courts to try and win, Opening OpenAI to prevent it from turning into a profit-making company. OpenAI was started by Musk and Altman as a non-profit focused on AI security, but the company always needs money to achieve its goals, and investors may not want to invest more if it remains unprofitable. Although Musk is right because he made the initial investment with the goal of helping people, the emails revealed in court also show that he pushed the idea of becoming a for-profit company years ago mainly so that he could have an easier time raising money. money. This case, then, is just an attempt to limit OpenAI.
As part of the lawsuit, Musk said OpenAI is using excessive fees in a way that hinders competition. Everyone in tech seems to be a free market until they aren’t.
