Elon Musk, OpenAI rivalry escalates in AI talent war
CNBC Television·2025-09-16 16:27

Talent Acquisition and Competition - OpenAI poached XAI's former finance chief, Mike Liberator, as business finance officer for AI infrastructure [2] - XAI has experienced several high-profile departures, including its general counsel, a senior attorney, and co-founder Igor Babushkin [3] - Attracting, poaching, and retaining top AI talent is crucial in the current AI boom [4] - Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta are offering multi-million dollar pay packages and bonuses to secure scarce expertise [5] Financial Implications and Investments - Companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on NVIDIA hardware, cloud capacity, and data centers [6] - OpenAI is not yet profitable but is willing to operate at a loss to maintain growth [6] - Compensation packages include a mix of cash and equity [9][10] Competitive Landscape - XAI is building an LLM to compete with companies like Meta and OpenAI [8] - Talent departures from XAI raise questions about its technological capabilities and business prospects [8] - Mark Zuckerberg initiated the AI spending war [11]