Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been in a long - running feud over productive artificial intelligence , and while the jury is still out on whether or not this technology is a house of cards waiting to pop , we can say one matter for certain : employee of both company are strike it big .

A newreportfromBusiness Insiderpublished today render that both Musk ’s xAI and Altman ’s OpenAI are pay off handsomely to acquire the central talent need to build up their AI bot . The report look at the salaries of engineers from both startup using publicly usable visa software data that companies must lodge in parliamentary procedure to hire foreign workers . The data include view titles and salary , and it shows that Musk ’s hellbent desire to dumbfound OpenAI has done nothing if not put more money in railroad engineer ’ pockets .

Business Insidercompared the salaries of employee at both startups against the industriousness ’s prevailing wage for interchangeable office and found that xAI and OpenAI severally pay their employee 37 % and 87 % above the norm . The Department of Labor collects data point on prevailing wages , defined as the modal earnings ante up to worker in special occupations within a defined geographical area .

Elon Musk at a Trump rally in Pennsyvlania, holding a shirt over his shoulder.

Michael Swensen/Getty Images

xAI only has about 100 employee flop now and has filed visa applications for 10 roles with the lowest - paid railroad engineer receiving $ 250,000 and the highest - paid sack up $ 500,000 . One employee at xAI , a principal machine get a line engineer , was paid almost double the government - defined prevailing wage . OpenAI has M of employees with earnings lay out from $ 145,000 to $ 530,000 . The wage compass is wider there in part because OpenAI has many more administrative employees .

None of this fresh data should be terribly surprising . The entire tech industry is going through a massive AI hype cycle , and every company needs to confuse the buzzword around so as to please investors . The likes of Google and Meta are also competing for AI talent as they hope to tantalise the AI moving ridge and fuel further increase . commercial enterprise Insider’sanalysis did not look at pay offered by those company . The data also does n’t include stock - free-base recompense .

Add on top of that the history between Musk and Altman . The former is a spurned devotee who gave up his position at OpenAI over diverging views , only for the company to become a global sensation just a few age later . It ’s like breaking up with a girl only for her to have a massive glow - up years later .

Tina Romero Instagram

Musk has elevate billions of dollars to try out and gain it back , make his own competing AI company and chatbot in the form of Grok that he has sound out would produce the most gratuitous spoken language - frontwards chatbot of them all . He’sattached it to Xin order to reasonably salvage the $ 44 billion purchase of that company as well . Between the two speculation , more than $ 50 billion has been empower — this is a heavy swing for Musk . It will be a major hit to his ego if xAI and its Grok chatbot were to break down .

Musk is also using the courts to try and make headway , suing OpenAIin a command to stop it from converting into a for - gain company . OpenAI was started by Musk and Altman as a non - profit focalise on AI condom , but the ship’s company continually needs cash to fuel its ambitions , and investors are n’t going to want to put in much more if it remains a convolute non - gain . While Musk is right in that he did bring home the bacon the initial funds with the express purpose of creating a public benefit , emails unwrap in court also show he pushed the idea of becoming a for - earnings society years ago specifically so it could have an easy time raising money . This lawsuit , then , is really just an attempt to slow OpenAI down .

As part of the lawsuit , Musk has say OpenAI is using exorbitant salaries in a manner meant to suffocate challenger . Everyone in tech seems to be a free securities industry maximalist until they are n’t .

Dummy

Elon MuskOpenAIxai

Daily Newsletter

Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .

News from the future , delivered to your present .

You May Also Like

James Cameron Underwater

Anker Solix C1000 Bag

Naomi 3

Sony 1000xm5

NOAA GOES-19 Caribbean SAL

Ballerina Interview

Tina Romero Instagram

Dummy

James Cameron Underwater

Anker Solix C1000 Bag

Oppo Find X8 Ultra Review

Best Gadgets of May 2025

Steam Deck Clair Obscur Geforce Now

Breville Paradice 9 Review