Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) co-founder and CEO Elon Musk said the company has been increasing the compensation packages for its artificial intelligence (AI) engineering team, aiming to counter aggressive recruitment tactics by rivals.
"Tesla is increasing comp (contingent on progress milestones) of our AI engineering team,” the billionaire said in a post on X.
This move comes in response to ChatGPT maker OpenAI "aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in a few cases," according to Musk.
Musk was responding to the departure of Tesla AI scientist Ethan Knight, who chose to join Tesla CEO’s own xAI venture over OpenAI.
"Ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,” he wrote.
Musk, who is currently ranked as the third-richest person globally, has a complex history with OpenAI, having been one of its co-founders.
Following a parting of ways with the AI firm, he’s trying to approach the burgeoning technology through various avenues, including its application in developing autonomous driving technologies at Tesla and initiatives at xAI.