AI Twitter has been a flutter ever since Meta, the disaster formally known as The Facebook, has decided to go ALL IN on their AI team, and poach the hottest talent in the market.
The story has been rehashed a thousand times, from a million angles, but the only two that matter are this:
- The Ambition
- The Pay
Meta already has an AI function, but it is widely considered second rate. That said, it IS free to use, and open source, so you can run it on Groq chips for lightening fast speeds (think of the Nos cylinders in Fast and Furious, but for computers). I often API it in when I need to trade off quality for speed and cost.
That all changes with the Dream Team. Clearly Zuck isn’t interested in helping people update their Facebook Status more succinctly, they want to be the leaders of the revolution. And while Facebook has taken a prestige hit, Instagram and Whatsapp are still massively profitable. They have the funds to do it.
Which brings me to the next point, the pay.
Tech salaries have been high for a while. Obviously there are the billionaire founders, but it isn’t uncommon for people to be making 250k a few years out of college, and it isn’t super rare for talented people in the Valley to be making 2-4x that (full disclosure: I am not one of these people).
But the new pay packages, if true, are wild. One AI researcher was offered $18m to join Meta, they turned it down to join a buzzier, cooler startup. Someone has accepted a $100m four year deal, but no one (well, someone, but not me) knows who. And Alexandr (not a typo) Wang sold 49% of his company, Scale AI, to become Zuck’s minion. Without knowing the cap table, it is likely that Mr Wang is now part of the tres commas club. Not bad for a 24 year old.
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