Salary Data Shows How XAI Pays Workers Compared With OpenAI [Video]

As the artificial-intelligence industry continues to attract attention, power, and billions of dollars in funding, two major players — Elon Musk‘s xAI and Sam Altman‘s OpenAI — are locked in a contentious battle over talent. Musk filed a lawsuit in August accusing Altman’s company of offering “lavish compensation” to “starve competitors.”

To examine Musk’s claims about salaries, Business Insider analyzed wage data from specialty visa applications for each company from 2024. While both offered compensation well above typical industry wages for the handful of roles for which data was available, OpenAI paid some of its staff an even higher premium over standard rates.

The documentation that companies must file when hiring foreign workers on specialty visas like the H-1B provides a window into otherwise private compensation data at both firms and gives rare insight into the expensive war for AI talent.

xAI is only a fraction of the size of OpenAI; the company employs about …