Musk confirmed the same while responding to a recent report by The Information. According to the report, Tesla machine-learning scientist Ethan Knight was planning to join Musk’s AI company, xAI.
In a recent post on his social media platform X (previously Twitter), Musk responded to OpenAI’s hiring efforts by saying, “They have been aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in a few cases.”
Musk wrote: “Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,”
The billionaire has also confirmed that “Tesla is increasing comp (contingent on progress milestones) of our AI engineering team.”
OpenAI has yet to share an official statement about the incident.
AI talent war heats up
As tech companies race to become dominant players in the field of artificial intelligence, competition for AI talent has been on the rise. Apart from offering lucrative salaries, leaders of some major tech companies are reportedly trying to woo engineers personally.
A recent report claimed that Facebook-parent Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been writing personal emails to AI researchers at Google’s DeepMind. The report also noted that the social media giant has even offered jobs to candidates without conducting any interviews.
Apart from Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin also reportedly called an employee who was thinking of leaving the tech giant for Microsoft-backed OpenAI. As per another report by The Information, Brin made several promises to convince the employee to stay, including offering a higher pay.
In another X post, Musk noted: “The talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!”
