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Thinking Machines Lab, the much-talked-about, secretive AI startup founded earlier this year by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, has been shelling out top dollar for technical talent ahead of launching any products.
TML is paying two members of its technical staff $450,000 in salary, while another is getting $500,000, according to hiring data obtained by Business Insider. A fourth staffer, listed as a “co-founder/machine learning specialist,” receives $450,000 per year.
The data comes from federal filings that companies are required to make when they hire a non-US resident on an H-1B visa, which allows them to hire 85,000 specialized workers through an annual lottery.
Since companies rarely disclose salary data, the data offers a rare snapshot of what candidates are fetching in this job market. The figures only include base salaries, not the lucrative sign-on bonuses and equity awards that are often where the real money is made when someone goes to work for a startup.
A spokesperson for TML declined to comment. OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.
The data is from the first quarter of this year, before Murati raised $2 billion in seed funding at a $10 billion valuation, as BI previously reported. It is also before Meta hired Scale CEO Alexandr Wang as part of a $14.3 billion deal to take a 49% stake in his company, ratcheting up the AI talent wars to a new level of feverish intensity. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta was trying to poach AI talent with signing bonuses of $100 million.
The $462,500 average salary TML offered four technical hires is considerably higher than more established large language model competitors Murati is aiming to compete with.
OpenAI is paying an average of $292,115 to the 29 technical staffers listed in the filings, with the highest-paid position earning $530,000 and the lowest earning $200,000. Anthropic pays an average of $387,500 to 14 technical hires, with the highest-paid position earning $690,000 and the lowest receiving $300,000.
TML went on a hiring spree earlier this year, hiring Bob McGrew, OpenAI’s former chief research officer; researcher Alec Radford; John Schulman, who co-led the creation of ChatGPT; Jonathan Lachman, formerly the head of special projects at OpenAI; Barret Zoph, a cocreator of ChatGPT; and Alexander Kirillov, who worked closely with Murati on ChatGPT’s voice mode.
The company has paused accepting new applications, according to its website.
Murati spent 6 ½ years at OpenAI, where she worked on the development of ChatGPT and other AI research initiatives. She was briefly appointed interim CEO in November 2023 after OpenAI’s board abruptly fired Sam Altman, a move that sparked turmoil within the company. After Altman’s reinstatement as CEO, Murati resumed her role as CTO.
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