Tesla is increasing the remuneration of AI engineers, as CEO Elon Musk acknowledged in a series of posts on his social media network, X (previously Twitter).
Musk’s revelation comes amid the “craziest talent war” with competitors such as OpenAI and Meta, who have successfully lured away some of Tesla’s engineers with attractive offers.
“The talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!” Musk exclaimed. To counteract this, Tesla is implementing a new compensation structure for its AI team, which is contingent on achieving certain progress milestones. “Tesla is increasing comp (contingent on progress milestones) of our AI engineering team,” Musk said.
The Tesla CEO also stated that OpenAI has been “aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers” and that “in a few cases” they have succeeded.
The AI surge has prompted tech businesses to offer multimillion-dollar salary packages
The move was triggered when Ethan Knight, a machine learning scientist from Tesla’s Autopilot team, left to join Musk’s AI firm, xAI.
“Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,” Musk said.
Musk also noted that Tesla’s AI team, which is in charge of developing autonomous driving technologies, has over 200 engineers and is making tremendous progress. “Tesla’s pace of progress with autonomy is accelerating,” he noted.
Despite these efforts, Tesla’s base pay has historically been lower than those paid by many Big Tech companies, like Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. Data from employment sites like Levels and Glassdoor show that Tesla’s Autopilot team pays entry-level engineers in the San Francisco Bay area between $160,000 and $170,000. This figure was criticized as “ridiculously low for the level of skill it requires” on Team Blind, a popular under-the-radar social networking platform for computer workers.
The AI surge has prompted tech businesses to offer multimillion-dollar salary packages, putting more pressure on Tesla to remain competitive in attracting and maintaining employees. According to Tesla’s proxy filing for 2023, the median total yearly compensation for its employees was $34,084 in 2022, the latest year for which data is available. Musk himself has not taken a cash salary since 2020, but his stock options, valued in the billions, have attracted regulatory attention.
Musk also noted that Tesla’s AI team, which is in charge of developing autonomous driving technologies, has over 200 engineers and is making tremendous progress. “Tesla’s pace of progress with autonomy is accelerating,” he said.
Despite these efforts, Tesla’s base pay has historically been lower than those paid by many Big Tech companies, like Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. Data from employment sites like Levels and Glassdoor shows that Tesla’s Autopilot team pays between $160,000 and $170,000 to entry-level engineers in the San Francisco Bay area. This figure was criticized as “ridiculously low for the level of skill it requires” on Team Blind, a popular under-the-radar social networking platform for tech workers.
The AI surge has prompted tech businesses to offer multimillion-dollar salary packages, putting more pressure on Tesla to remain competitive in attracting and maintaining employees.
According to Tesla’s 2023 proxy filing, the median total annual salary for its employees was $34,084 in 2022, the most recent year for which data was available. Musk has not taken a cash salary since 2020.