Thinking Machines Lab Offers Record Salaries to AI Talent

Thinking Machines Lab Offers Record Salaries to AI Talent

Thinking Machines Lab, a mysterious AI startup founded earlier this year by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is investing huge sums in recruiting top technical talent even before launching any products.

TML is paying two members of its technical team a salary of $450,000 (about CZK 10.6 million), while another employee receives $500,000 (about CZK 11.8 million) per year. A fourth employee, listed as a "co-founder/machine learning specialist," also earns $450,000 annually.

These figures come from federal documents that companies must file when hiring employees from non-English-speaking countries on H-1B visas (a visa program that allows 85,000 specialized workers to be hired through an annual lottery).

An Exceptional Look at the AI Job Market

Since companies rarely disclose salary figures, this data offers a rare glimpse into how much candidates earn in this job market. The reported amounts include only base salaries, not lucrative signing bonuses and profit-sharing arrangements, which often represent the real money when working for a startup.

A TML spokesperson declined to comment. OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.

The data comes from the first quarter of this year, before Murati raised $2 billion (about CZK 47 billion) in seed funding at a valuation of $10 billion (about CZK 236 billion). It also predates Meta's hiring of Scale CEO Alexandr Wang as part of a $14.3 billion (about CZK 337 billion) deal for a 49% stake in his company, which took the battle for AI talent to a new level of feverish intensity.

Comparison with Competitors

The average salary of $462,500 (about CZK 10.9 million) that TML offered to four technical employees is significantly higher than that of established competitors in the large language model field that Murati plans to challenge.

OpenAI pays an average of $292,115 (about CZK 6.9 million) to the 29 technical employees listed in the documents, with the highest-paid position earning $530,000 (about CZK 12.5 million) and the lowest-paid earning $200,000 (about CZK 4.7 million). Anthropic pays an average of $387,500 (about CZK 9.1 million) to 14 technical employees, with the highest-paid position receiving $690,000 (about CZK 16.3 million) and the lowest-paid receiving $300,000 (about CZK 7.1 million).

Recruiting Stars from OpenAI

TML launched a hiring spree earlier this year and recruited several key figures. They include Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former chief research officer; researcher Alec Radford; John Schulman, who co-created ChatGPT; Jonathan Lachman, OpenAI's former head of special projects; Barret Zoph, another ChatGPT co-developer; and Alexander Kirillov, who worked closely with Murati on ChatGPT's voice mode.

According to its website, the company has paused accepting new job applications.

Mira Murati's Career

Murati spent 6.5 years at OpenAI, where she worked on the development of ChatGPT and other AI research initiatives. In November 2023, she was briefly appointed interim CEO after OpenAI's board abruptly fired Sam Altman, causing turmoil within the company. After Altman returned as CEO, Murati resumed her role as CTO.

The current state of the AI talent market demonstrates the intensity of the competition between technology giants and startups for the best minds in the field. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta had poached AI talent with signing bonuses of up to $100 million (about CZK 2.4 billion).