Skyrocketing salaries and secretive recruiting efforts have taken over Big Tech as the AI talent wars heat up, with companies including Meta, Google, and Microsoft vying for employees by offering highly competitive compensation. Meanwhile, Apple has also lost talent to Meta, with four AI researchers joining Zuckerberg's company in July alone. Meta offered former Apple manager Ruoming Pang a reported $200 million compensation package in early July to join Meta's superintelligence effort — and Pang accepted. GoogleGoogle signed a $2.4 billion deal with AI coding startup Windsurf last month to bring key talent to the Google DeepMind AI team. By the end of June, eight OpenAI researchers had taken the offer and joined Meta's superintelligence team.