The battle for artificial intelligence (AI) talent is intensifying, particularly among big tech companies. On July 22 (local time), the Financial Times (FT) reported that Microsoft (MS) had hired more than 20 AI-related employees from Google DeepMind's research division.
On the same day, Amar Subramanya, who led the development of Google's Gemini AI chatbot, announced via his LinkedIn account that he had been appointed Vice President of AI at MS.
According to an MS recruitment official, Vice President Subramanya will be joined by former DeepMind engineering lead Sonal Gupta, former software engineer Adam Sadovsky, and former product manager Tim Frank. According to this official, MS has hired at least 24 employees over the past six months.
The mass migration of Google DeepMind employees to MS is largely attributed to MS Vice President Mustafa Suleyman. Suleyman, who co-founded DeepMind with Demis Hassabis, moved to become CEO of the AI startup Inflection in 2022 and was recruited by MS in 2023. When he joined MS, several Inflection researchers moved with him. In addition, at the end of last year, DeepMind's Dominic King and Christopher Kelly also moved to MS.
Recently, major big tech companies have been accelerating their recruitment of AI talent from competitors, resulting in a sharp rise in salaries for AI professionals. Last month, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, publicly criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for attempting to poach his employees by offering signing bonuses of up to $100 million (approximately 138.2 billion won). Meta has recently recruited Alexander Wang, CEO of ScaleAI, and Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub. The company has also hired employees from OpenAI and Apple, and last month, DeepMind alumnus Matt Belloso joined Meta as well.
However, it cannot be said that Google is being unilaterally outcompeted in the race to secure AI talent. According to sources, DeepMind's attrition rate is lower than the industry average, and DeepMind has also hired a similar number of researchers from MS. FT described the situation as "a new front in the war for talent among Silicon Valley big tech companies as they seek to gain an edge in emerging technology fields."
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