Grok wants Wall Street.
Elon Musk‘s xAI is recruiting investment bankers to train its chatbot, offering between $45 and $100 an hour for a remote “Investment Banking Expert” in mergers and acquisitions, debt capital markets, and equity capital markets, according to new job postings.
The hires will help train Grok, the company’s chatbot, Jeffrey Weichsel, who identifies himself as a member of the program staff at xAI on LinkedIn, said in a post on X. It’s not clear how many roles the company is looking to fill, and representatives for xAI did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
In their positions, the employees will be expected to improve xAI’s models by “providing high-quality data annotations and inputs,” the job descriptions said. They will partner with xAI’s technical teams, focusing on annotation tools for investment banking data and analyzing “complex problems.” Ideally, candidates should have experience relevant to their line of expertise, like having been an M&A advisor, analyst, associate, or vice president, as well as mentoring or training others.
Workdays will last 8.5 hours, according to the postings, compared to the notoriously grueling hours of a traditional investment banking analyst. An employee working those hours and making $100 per hour could expect to earn around $221,000 per year, before taxes. For those making $45 per hour, the annual pay comes out to around $99,450 before taxes.
In 2024, first-year investment banking analysts made an average base pay of more than $110,000 and earned a bonus that equaled around 50% of their base salary, according to a survey from recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners. The base salary for associates at bulge-bracket banks that year, however, ranged from $176,000 to $221,000, plus a bonus that could top $130,000.
xAI also posted new roles for a “Finance Expert” in various fields, including private credit, crypto, and quantitative trading, with the same pay ranges. Applicants for the expert roles need to provide a resume and cover letter, and describe some “exceptional work” they’ve done in no more than 100 words. (This paragraph, excluding this sentence, is 50 words.)
Musk’s AI company is hardly the first to tap bankers’ expertise. Business Insider analyzed 18 job postings in November from 8 AI training companies for Wall Street gigs, including one that offered $150 an hour. xAI has previously posted roles for AI tutors across investment banking, trading, and private equity. In October, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI had hired more than 100 former investment bankers to train AI on how to create financial models, with the goal of eventually replacing some of the rote work junior bankers grind through. The company was offering $150 an hour, according to the outlet.
One former investment banker that Business Insider spoke to said he started training AI models as a side hustle to make extra cash and set himself up for the workplaces of the future.
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