The former head of developer relations at OpenAI, who left the Sam Altman-led startup in March, announced this week that he had joined Google.
Logan Kilpatrick will run its AI studio and assist with Gemini, Google’s chatbot. “We have a lot of tough work ahead of us, but we will make Google the best home for AI developers,” he says. he said on LinkedIn Tuesday. “In addition, we are building the most AI developer-focused team in the world.”
At OpenAI, Kilpatrick helped AI developers bring their products to life. His transition from a Microsoft-backed AI startup to Google first reported by Business Insider AND Gizmochinais another example Large Tech is stealing talent from companies creating generative artificial intelligence technologies. Microsoft in March hired most of Inflection AI’s staff. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave a public speech OpenAI researchers join a cloud software company last fall. The poaching of AI talent is not circumscribed to Large Tech. Wall Street banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup they attracted talent from rival Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have also lost artificial intelligence workers to their competitors.
Investing in or poaching AI startups is a way for Large Tech to strengthen its AI efforts without having to navigate the legal hurdles associated with mergers and acquisitions that has declined over the last two years as a result greater antitrust control and high interest rates.
Some may ask, why can’t Large Tech and Wall Street just hire their own novel AI talent? Is global artificial intelligence talent shortage — something that is driving offers up to $1 million even as layoffs plague the industry. Smaller startups and vast companies, including Meta, also offer stock acquisition schedules.
“There is a secular shift in talent selection,” Naveen Rao, head of generative artificial intelligence at Databricks, told the Wall Street Journal in overdue March. “On the one hand we have an excess of people and on the other hand we have a shortage.”
