The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is heating up in Europe with a surge of AI startups, leading to a battle for technical talent. Companies like Google DeepMind are now facing a tough choice between paying large sums of money to retain their best talent or risk losing them to competitors. The success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has energized investors, who are now pouring money into promising AI startups, hoping to uncover the next overnight success.
This has led to a crop of foreign AI firms, including Canada’s Cohere and US-based Anthropic and OpenAI, setting up offices in Europe, adding to the pressure on tech companies already trying to attract and retain talent in the region. Founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014, London-based DeepMind has made a name for itself by applying AI to everything from board games to structural biology. However, it now faces a host of well-funded rivals flooding its territory, while a growing number of its employees have quit to launch their own ventures. Recent high-profile exits include co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who left to set up California-based Inflection AI alongside LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, and research scientist Arthur Mensch, now CEO of Mistral AI.
Both companies have received multi-billion dollar valuations in the short time they have been active. In an attempt to discourage staff from leaving, DeepMind gave a handful of senior researchers access to restricted stock, worth millions of dollars, earlier this year, according to a source familiar with the matter. Despite the competition, a DeepMind spokesperson told Reuters that the company “continues to do well in attracting and nurturing talent.” According to executive search firm Avery Fairbank, there has been an “exponential increase” in pay for C-suite staff at AI companies in Britain over the last year.
“The entrance of foreign AI giants such as Anthropic and Cohere into London’s market will further escalate the competition for AI talent,” said Charlie Fairbank, the firm’s managing director. Executives on base salaries of around 350,000 pounds have seen pay packets jump between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds, he said. Cohere, which designs in-house chatbots and other tools for its customers, hired Phil Blunsom, a lead researcher at DeepMind for seven years, as its chief scientist in 2022. Sebastian Ruder also joined Cohere from DeepMind in January. “It’s rare to find a company building a massive business from scratch, with many of the leading minds in the industry,” he told Reuters. “When that kind of chance comes along, you take it.” The talent war means workers are increasingly well-placed to make demands of their prospective employers.
London-based AI audio firm ElevenLabs is offering new hires stock options, generous salaries, and fully-remote working, although most advertised roles stipulate that employees should be based in Europe. Having recently raised $80 million in funding from venture capital firms like a16z and Sequoia, the company told Reuters it would soon double its total headcount to 100. Paris-based startup Bioptimus, also founded by former DeepMind staff, raised $35 million in February. Thomas Clozel, an early investor in the company, said startups were looking to recruit talent from Big Tech like Google by offering them more influence over a company’s direction. “Google is one of the best at what it does and produces some of the best talent,” he said. “At a smaller startup, you have a unique opportunity to remain true to the work you are passionate about and have a stake in the success of the company.”
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