A high-stakes war for artificial intelligence talent is sweeping through Silicon Valley, as tech giants and well-funded startups compete for a small but highly sought-after group of elite researchers capable of pushing the boundaries of machine learning.

The industry’s most influential AI labs, including OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, are engaged in an aggressive bidding war for top researchers, offering eye-watering salaries, staggering bonuses, and multi-year compensation packages that rival the budgets of some start-ups.

The scale of the frenzy was laid bare by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he described the current AI recruitment environment as “the most intense talent market I have seen in my career.” His remarks came just a day after OpenAI unveiled GPT-5, the latest generation of its groundbreaking AI system—an announcement that has only intensified the race.

Meta’s High-Stakes Play

Meta has emerged as one of the most aggressive suitors in this talent war, pursuing key researchers from OpenAI and other labs with offers worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Reports from insiders indicate that Meta has put forward at least ten compensation packages valued at up to $300 million over four years to lure OpenAI researchers away. These deals often include massive signing bonuses and equity grants, signaling the company’s willingness to spend heavily to secure intellectual capital that could give it an edge in developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The hiring push is being spearheaded by Meta’s newly formed Superintelligence Labs, an ambitious division tasked with creating AI systems that can operate beyond human cognitive limits. The unit is headed by Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, both figures with proven track records in scaling advanced technology ventures.

Anthropic and the New AI Gold Rush

Anthropic, a fast-growing AI research firm founded by former OpenAI employees, is also in the thick of the competition. Backed by billions in funding from tech giants such as Amazon and Google, the company has been aggressively expanding its research capabilities, offering mid-six-figure base salaries and lucrative performance incentives to attract world-class talent.

The industry-wide scramble has created a “gold rush” atmosphere reminiscent of the early days of the internet boom. But unlike the dot-com era, the number of people who can meaningfully contribute to the race for AGI and superintelligence is vanishingly small.

The Search for the Final Breakthroughs

Altman emphasized that while some firms are focusing on poaching high-profile “shiny names,” the real challenge lies in finding individuals capable of delivering the last few critical breakthroughs that could push AI systems into superintelligence.

“The hope is they know how to discover the remaining ideas… a medium-sized handful of people who can figure them out,” he said.

Despite the scarcity of top-tier AI minds, Altman rejected the notion that the talent pool is limited to a few dozen elite researchers.

“I think there’s like many thousands of people that we could find, and probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the world who are capable of doing this kind of work,” he said, suggesting that the race is as much about identifying hidden talent as it is about winning over established figures.

Why the Stakes Are Higher Than Ever

The intensity of this talent war is rooted in the industry’s belief that whoever achieves superintelligence first could gain transformative economic, political, and technological power. AGI—a system capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence across multiple disciplines—remains a theoretical goal, but the resources being committed suggest that tech leaders view its arrival not as a question of if, but when.

For companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, the payoff for finding the right people could be monumental. The breakthroughs that these researchers might achieve could redefine industries, reshape economies, and even influence the global balance of power.

The Future of AI Recruitment

The current environment shows no signs of cooling. With billions in venture funding and corporate budgets allocated to AI development, the financial packages on offer are likely to continue climbing. What began as a competition over who had the largest clusters of GPUs has now evolved into a competition over who can assemble the most extraordinary team of human minds.

The brilliance and creativity of a small group of researchers may well decide who wins the race to superintelligence as the AI industry shifts from building bigger models to solving the hardest remaining problems.

OpenAI’s newly unveiled GPT-5, which the company announced on Thursday, is already available to all ChatGPT users — including those on the free tier — but Apple Intelligence users will have to wait until the rollout of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe 26 before they can access it, Apple confirmed to 9to5Mac.

For now, Apple Intelligence, the tech giant’s new AI framework that powers enhanced Siri capabilities and its Google Lens-like Visual Intelligence feature, still relies on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. GPT-5’s absence means users won’t yet experience the model’s advanced reasoning, faster responses, and improved multimodal capabilities within Apple’s native ecosystem.

Apple has so far only committed to releasing its next major software updates “in the fall,” with general availability expected next month, in line with its usual post-iPhone event schedule. It remains unclear whether GPT-5 integration will be part of developer or public betas before the full rollout.

OpenAI, however, has wasted no time in making GPT-5 widely accessible. The company says ChatGPT now serves about 700 million weekly users, reflecting explosive adoption across consumer and enterprise markets. GPT-5’s release is part of OpenAI’s aggressive push to stay ahead in the AI race, offering deeper contextual understanding, more accurate reasoning, and faster multimodal processing.

However, Apple’s delayed rollout highlights the unusual nature of its AI strategy in 2024 and 2025. Long criticized for lagging behind rivals like Google and Microsoft in consumer-facing AI features, Apple surprised the industry in June when it announced a direct partnership with OpenAI—one of its rare moves to integrate a third-party AI service deeply into its core software. Under this arrangement, Apple Intelligence can hand off certain complex tasks to ChatGPT when Siri or its own AI tools fall short, without users needing to create an OpenAI account. The integration is positioned as a privacy-conscious collaboration, with Apple promising that requests routed to ChatGPT will be transparent and optional.

This partnership was born from Apple’s cautious AI philosophy, which emphasizes on-device processing and strict data privacy safeguards. Rather than building a large language model entirely in-house, an effort that could take years and cost billions, Apple opted for a hybrid approach, pairing its proprietary on-device models with established cloud-based models from partners like OpenAI.

The move is seen as an acknowledgment that the AI race has accelerated faster than Apple’s internal development cycles could keep up, while still letting the company frame the integration as “Apple-first” through tight control over data handling and user consent.

The delayed integration into Apple Intelligence also underscores the company’s careful approach to AI rollouts — a strategy Apple has consistently taken to maintain tight control over user experience and privacy. While the partnership with OpenAI marks a rare step for Apple in directly embedding third-party AI into its core software, it also places the company in the middle of the fast-moving generative AI race dominated by OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta.

But Apple’s hesitation may also be influenced by broader industry dynamics. GPT-5 arrives at a time when regulators in the US and Europe are ramping up scrutiny of AI models, data practices, and potential bias. Apple may be giving itself room to fine-tune safeguards and ensure compliance by waiting until iOS 26.

When the integration does land, Apple users will be able to seamlessly tap GPT-5 for more complex Siri queries, advanced text generation, and visual analysis — a leap that could redefine Apple’s pitch for AI-powered personal devices.

Although OpenAI removed ChatGPT-4o after the launch of GPT-5, it was forced to return it following backlash. This means that for now, Apple users will stay toggling between Apple’s GPT-4o-powered features and the standalone ChatGPT app.