Over the last few years, the AI talent market has looked more like a professional sports draft than a conventional hiring cycle. Cash-rich labs are offering salaries more commonly associated with pro athletes, plus equity packages that can turn early employees into billionaires. The allure of life-changing paychecks has resulted in elite researchers swapping between rival labs at dizzying speed.
Google DeepMind, which was once the leading destination for many of those researchers—especially in Europe—is now finding itself on the losing side of that contest, according to a new overview of the flow of engineering talent exclusively shared with Fortune. A new analysis from Zeki Data, UK-based data intelligence company, shows that where OpenAI and Anthropic are making gains in the AI talent market, Google DeepMind and, to some extent, Meta are stumbling.
