OpenAI’s New Weapon in Talent War With Google: $10 Million Pay Packages for Researchers

The recruiting fight between OpenAI and Google is growing fiercer.

As OpenAI proceeds with an employee share sale that would nearly triple the startup’s valuation to more than $80 billion, its recruiters are courting top artificial intelligence employees at Google with millions of dollars and a message: Join us now to lock in a stock package at the current valuation of $27 billion and benefit from the impending increase.

As part of their pitch, OpenAI recruiters have claimed researchers would have greater access to computing resources, including the specialized chips staff rely on to run experiments and develop new techniques for AI models, according to people with knowledge of the claims.