Anthropic Pays the Highest Salaries in the AI Industry. The CEO Now Realizes People Might Choose It for the Money

Anthropic is paying top-tier salaries in the AI industry yet failing to prevent the departure of key researchers, revealing the limits of the talent acquisition competition. CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern that new hires might be joining for money rather than the mission, and this remark became a target of ridicule online.

Recently, Lilian Weng, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, left the company to join OpenAI. Noam Shazeer from Google and Nobel laureate John Jumper moved to OpenAI and Anthropic, respectively, and some talent recruited by Meta also moved back to OpenAI.

The criteria researchers use to choose a company are not limited to salary.

• More compute resources
• Influence over product and research direction
• Freedom to decide their own research methods
• Equity available before an IPO
• A sense of mission and status in changing the future of AI

As all labs become able to offer millions of dollars, salary is losing its power as a differentiator. Consequently, companies are promoting mission as their final hiring tool, but it is difficult to verify a candidate's true beliefs amidst massive compensation.

Reports that Anthropic's culture interviews check how much applicants fear AI technology also illustrate this tension. Recently, more than 1,300 employees at AI labs signed a letter warning that technological development could outpace control.

Frequent talent movement undermines the continuity and reliability of research. More than 400 former Apple employees have joined OpenAI, and Apple has sued OpenAI for trade secret infringement. AI companies can buy researchers' time, but they cannot buy long-term loyalty.