In recent weeks, companies like Meta and OpenAI have been offering $8–20 million a year to recruit top AI engineers, a situation that many investors have called “shocking,” seeing young engineers being paid the same as… superstar players for the first time.
Meta has just formed an AI team from key personnel of its competitors. (Source: Fortune)
Fresh AI PhDs are earning hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year from companies like Google, ByteDance, and hedge funds. One student with no real-world experience left his PhD program at the University of Chicago to receive a salary of “nearly $1 million” from ByteDance. One startup founder even paid employees $500,000 in cash up front, even before the company raised any funding or had a product.
“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” said AI investor Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures, referring to three friends —machine learning engineers and AI researchers—who recently received huge compensation packages ranging from $8 million to $20 million a year to join Meta.
It is estimated that there are only about 2,000 individuals globally capable of building foundational AI models. Meanwhile, trillion-dollar companies like Meta and Microsoft spare no expense to maintain their position in the global AI race.
This competition has even encouraged university students to drop out to join the workforce early, and there have been calls for researchers to hire “agents” like professional athletes. The proportion of AI PhDs choosing to work in the private sector has increased from 20% (2000) to 70% (2023).
The demand for AI talent is growing faster than the number of people being trained. (Source: Ciodive)
General Assembly’s State of Tech Talent 2025 report found that many companies are rushing into the AI talent hiring wave without a long-term strategy and investment in internal training. 75% of tech employers admit they are hiring too quickly for AI, failing to build a sustainable pipeline of quality candidates. 68% of companies are willing to pay more for candidates with AI skills.
This leads to many consequences for business sustainability. Many companies still apply the process of firing, quick recruitment, and lack of strategy in developing talent.
“AI is changing at a breakneck pace ,” Chiara Di Sclafani, senior human resources specialist at MINT, stressed in the report. “You can’t just deploy it and forget it. AI strategies and initiatives need to be constantly updated if they want to keep up with the technological evolution.”
The trend of increasing recruitment of AI talent with superstar treatment is unlikely to stop anytime soon. Manpower’s Talent Shortage 2025 report shows that the information technology (IT) industry is one of the most seriously short of human resources, with a rate of up to 766%, with the Asia- Pacific region recording 77% of businesses unable to find suitable AI candidates.
AI-related skills such as machine learning, data analytics, programming skills, and integrating AI into real-world products will be most sought after by businesses.
To adapt to the shortage, tech companies need to focus on reskilling existing employees to meet AI needs, recruiting by skill, and flexing the work environment.
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