Competition for talent in Europe is heating up as a wave of AI startups flood the market, forcing big players such as DeepMind to pay top dollar or risk losing their best talent, Reuters reports.Thanks to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform, investors are pouring capital into promising AI startups hoping to find their next big thing. Foreign AI companies, such as Canada’s Cohere and American-based Anthropic, as well as OpenAI, are setting up offices in Europe, further narrowing the talent gap for existing tech firms.
According to the Reuter’s report, Charlie Fairbank, managing director of the AI talent management firm Anthropic, the entry of foreign AI giants like Cohere into London’s market will further increase competition for AI talent.DeepMind, founded in London in 2014 and acquired by Google in 2021, is one of Europe’s most prominent AI companies, but it’s facing a wave of deep-pocketed competition and falling employee morale.
Co-founder Mustapha Suleyman left DeepMind to launch California-based Inflection AI, and researcher Arthur Mensch went on to become CEO of the fast-growing Mistral AI, both of which boast billion-dollar market capitalizations despite being relatively new to the scene.
According to reports, DeepMind offered senior researchers as much as $1 billion in restricted stock to try and keep them on board. A company spokesman told Reuters that the competition is fierce, but that they continue to attract and develop talent.