The battle between the big tech companies and well established startups are not about cutting edge projects or products. It is not of what the world famous AI research labs have in store. It is the perception and might me reality too of which company is gaining an edge in the AI race and in which manner. A lot of strategy goes in gaining lost ground and for the non-pioneers to enter the race and become competitive. At the core of it all, is the AI talent, which things pass is turning out to be scarce for the nature of outcomes, the milestones to be achieved and products and services which need to hit the market.
Everything can be achieved if they have the talent to run the show. And this at the crux of the AI tech talent war. The headline blares, “Amazon loses an AWS Gen AI boss as tech talent shuffle heats up.” Vasi Philomin told Reuters in an email that he left Amazon for another company, without providing the specifics. He was also incharge of the company’s bedrock services. He worked for eight years at Amazon led Gen AI efforts, product strategy and oversaw foundation models known as Amazon Titan. The fact of the matter is that Amazon is working to bolster its reputation in AI development, after rivals like OpenAI and Google have taken the lead, more so with consumer-focused models.
Rajesh Sheth is taking over his job at Amazon. Leading the offensive with “Zuck Bucks” – Meta’s lavish compensation packages, including the offers rumoured up to $100 million to recruit elites. Some big names have joined: former OpenAI researchers Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, Xiaohua Zhai, plus Google DeepMind’s Jack Rae and Sesame’s Johan Schalkwyk. Meta has also endured a brain drain: 11 out of 14 LLama researchers moved on, many to Mistral, OpenAI and Anthropic. Meta as a reaction invested $14-15 billion in Scale AI to secure its CEO Alexandr Wang and data labelling assets.
OpenAI has been actively recruiting from Google; 44 ex-Googlers in 2014 alone, and 85 over the last 18 months. Heavy retention bonuses were reported besides equity-heavy compensation. Altman criticized Meta’s bonus tactics, and also stated that none from OpenAI jumped ship. Google faces attrition of 5.4% of the team annually. Google and DeepMind are offering non-compete clauses and promotions to retain talent. Key researchers continue departing to Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral. Anthropic boasts of autonomy and mission driven culture and 80% two year retention. Others in the race, Mira Murati’s Thinking Lab and Mistral AI are attracting top researchers from big corporations.
THE AI RACE WILL BE DECIDED ONLY BY THE TOP TECH TALENT IN THIS FIELD, REST OF THE WORLD ARE DESTINED TO BE BYSTANDERS.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.