Chinese tech companies ByteDance and Tencent are spending massive amounts on bonuses and salaries to attract and retain AI talent. According to South China Morning Post, the former has increased its budget for employee bonuses by 35% over the previous year, while also allocating 150% more for future salary increases. On the other hand, the latter is reportedly hiring senior staff from competitors, even offering double their current salary just to get them to move.

This is part of the ongoing trend of increasing competitiveness in the AI jobs market, with companies in both the East and West looking to hire and retain the most talented AI engineers and developers to gain an edge over everyone else. While these companies are spending a lot of money on their people, this pales in comparison to what Meta is allegedly offering.

However, Tencent apparently succeeded where Zuckerberg has failed: the Chinese tech giant has recently hired Yao Shunyu, a former OpenAI researcher, as its chief AI scientist. He reports directly to its president, Martin Lau, and also heads the company’s AI Infrastructure and LLM Development units, reporting to Technology Engineering Group Head Lu Shan.

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