Seeing the growing demand for AI in various industries, companies are actively looking to hire individuals with expertise in this field. The trend extends to the Meta, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly personally reached out to AI talent at Google DeepMind, inviting them to join his company’s AI project.
Zuckerberg is aggressively trying to hire AI talent
Two people told The Information that Zuckerberg is personally writing emails to Google DeepMind employees. Although they have asked to remain anonymous, they said Zuckerberg’s email emphasized the importance of AI in his company, as well as the use of other persuasive tactics to attract them. They also mentioned that Zuckerberg had headhunted at least one person using his email.
This isn’t the only step Zuckerberg has made for his AI projects. Meta recently announced that they will bypass traditional interviews and directly offer jobs to qualified individuals in the AI field. In addition, Meta has increased the salaries of its employees who were considering offers from rival AI companies.
With Meta working on various AI projects, including artificial intelligence wristbands and integrating AI into Facebook, the need for AI talent will only grow. With that in mind, Zuckerberg is looking to hire AI talent. Whether it’s writing personal emails to lure employees away from competitors or offering high incentives, Zuckerberg is taking all the steps necessary to become the next big name in the AI industry.
Meta plans to stock more than 340,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs by the end of 2024. This major investment will enable the integration of AI into their apps (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp).
Underscoring the importance of these chips, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas shared on the Invest Like the Best podcast that when he tried to recruit a senior researcher from Met, the response was, “Get back to me when you have 10,000 H100 GPUs.”
Reflecting on the number of chips Meta has accumulated, Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’ve built the ability to do this at a scale that may be larger than any other single company.”
Meta isn’t the only company desperate to hire AI talent
The number of qualified AI specialists is very limited compared to the rapid growth of the AI industry. As reported by Fortune, in December 2023, what was billed as the largest machine learning conference ended up turning into an extravagant recruiting event.
Given the growing need for talent, we’re likely to see more approaches similar to what Zuckerberg has used at other companies to hire AI talent.
