Silicon Valley has seen a significant increase in the field of artificial intelligence for over a year, with investments directed towards startups that rely on artificial intelligence technologies to make significant progress. Meanwhile, big companies are striving to maintain their leading position through massive investments amounting to tens of billions annually.
In this battle, all means are allowed to recruit talented individuals capable of training and adapting artificial intelligence models to meet the company’s and its clients’ needs, according to “Lee Zeke” newspaper.
Candidates do not hesitate to specify their requirements before considering a job offer. Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of “Purplecity,” a search engine that uses generative artificial intelligence to answer user questions, affirmed: “I tried to hire a talented individual working at “Meta” with extensive experience, do you know what he told me? He said, ‘Come back when you have 10,000 “H100″ graphics processing units.”
The employee’s request means obtaining graphics chips from “Nvidia,” costing up to $40,000 each, used in training artificial intelligence models. This was confirmed by the founder and CEO of “Purplecity” with a sigh, saying: “This will cost us billions, and we will need to wait five to ten years to get the chips from “Nvidia.”
For established companies, sometimes it may be easier to acquire a startup instead of trying to attract talented employees one by one. Last June, “Databricks” chose to pay $1.3 billion to acquire “MosaicML,” a startup in the field of generative artificial intelligence, rather than hiring its own team. This investment highlights the significant value of experienced engineers in artificial intelligence and their importance.
Prior to the acquisition, the value of “MosaicML” was only $222 million. “Databricks” agreed to pay six times this amount to acquire exceptional talents, according to Patrick Windle, one of the company’s founders.
As for Microsoft, acquiring startups can be complex due to competition authorities’ vigilance. The tech giant, which invested billions in “OpenAI,” does not want to rely entirely on a startup. Therefore, to lead its own teams, it chose to poach two founders of the startup “Inflexion AI” specializing in generative artificial intelligence and developing personal chatbots, benefiting from most of the company’s team members.
In this way, companies demonstrate their readiness to do whatever it takes to persuade talented engineers to join them in the face of intense competition.
