Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories
Jul 22, 2025

The AI talent wars have begun

Tech firms big and small have reportedly been hiring AI engineers away from other companies with salary offers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, explains how this is changing the economics of Silicon Valley and startup culture.

Download
The AI talent wars have begun
Getty Images

Subscribe:

You might have heard Meta has been on a bit of a hiring spree recently as it tries to build out its new AI Superintelligence team. The company has reportedly been offering hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to attract leading AI researchers from rivals like OpenAI, Google and Apple.

And it's not just Meta doing the poaching. Tech companies big and small are jumping into the AI Wars.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, a reporter at The Information, about the AI talent wars happening behind the scenes of Silicon Valley.

More on this

“Meta hires two Apple AI researchers for Superintelligence push, Bloomberg News reports” - from Reuters

“Anthropic Revenue Hits $4 Billion Annual Pace as Competition With Cursor Intensifies” - from The Information

The Team