The Key To the Corporate AI Future Is Building Talent And Intellectual Property

Big tech companies like OpenAI and Meta are paying $100 million bonuses to poach top AI talent from each other, as well as from lesser competitors. So what are 'mere' Fortune 500 companies, not to mention smaller enterprises, supposed to do?

The answer lies in corporate assets that have been hiding in plain sight: intellectual property and advancement through training. IP, once dismissed as 'soft' compared to ostensibly 'hard assets' like real estate and factories, now dominates the economic value chain. Organizations that invest in their IP - and in protecting it - have a resource they can monetize and/or with which they can bargain. And when it comes to talent, there are only so many AI geniuses out there, but there are plenty of competent people/employees with good tech skills who are tied for various reasons to a place or employer. Effective implementation of AI as a means of optimizing performance may, in the long run, be more important than inventing more of it. Offering to pay employees to upgrade their skills, even if some eventually leave for more money or opportunity elsewhere (as they always have) is another way for 'normal' businesses to enhance their results and their futures. JL 

Thibault Spirlet reports in Business Insider:

The AI arms race will be won by companies that hoard top talent and lock up valuable intellectual property. "IP is king" as the competition heats up. "The days of publish or perish are over. It's now publish, and its value perishes, because it got eaten up by every foundational model." "Encrypt and silo" valuable IP, and sell it to the highest bidder — or keep it behind a paywall. Meta has offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million, part of a $15 billion deal to recruit Scale AI's CEO, Alexandr Wang, and other top talent. "We are seeing them hire away talent and IP to advance their models. They will pay to lock up the IP they think their models need and the people who create it, just to keep it away from their competitors."

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban said the AI arms race will be won by companies that hoard top talent and lock up valuable intellectual property — and that "IP is king" as the competition heats up.

"What people are missing about AI, IMO [in my opinion], is no company is going to spend what will end up being more than a trillion dollars and accept not being dominant," Cuban posted on X on Sunday.

Cuban believes that as the stakes grow, companies will stop at nothing to dominate, including hiring away key people and locking up the intellectual property they produce.

"We are seeing them hire away talent and IP to advance their models," he wrote in a follow-up X post. "They will start paying to lock up IP they think their models need and the people who create it, just to keep it away from their competitors."

Cuban's comments come as the AI talent wars reach fever pitch.

Meta has reportedly offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million, part of a $15 billion deal to recruit Scale AI's CEO, Alexandr Wang, and other top researchers.

On his brother's podcast, "Uncapped with Jack Altman," last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had tried to poach his best employees with nine-figure packages but had failed so far.

Meta has since pushed back, with CTO Andrew Bosworth saying on CNBC's "Closing Bell: Overtime" last month that Altman "neglected to mention that he's countering those offers."

But not everyone is biting. "People here are so mission-oriented," said Anthropic cofounder Benjamin Mann, who said his team turned down Meta's "mega offers."

Mann told "Lenny's Podcast" on Sunday that "at Anthropic, we affect the future of humanity," whereas "my best case scenario at Meta is that we make money."

Still, Cuban believes those kinds of altruistic motivations will become harder to hold onto in a landscape defined by corporate hoarding.

"We are seeing them hire away talent and IP to advance their models," he wrote in a follow-up X post. "They will start paying to lock up IP they think their models need and the people who create it just to keep it away from their competitors."

Cuban sees this changing the culture of research itself.

"The days of publish or perish are probably over. It's now publish, and its value perishes, because it got eaten up by every foundational model," he warned.

His advice: "Encrypt and silo" valuable IP, and sell it to the highest bidder — or keep it behind a paywall.

"IP is KING in an AI world," Cuban wrote. "The times they are a changing."

As for the broader battle brewing in the industry, he added: "They will find a way to battle. I don't know how, other than to guess it will get ugly."

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas echoed Cuban's prediction in an episode of the "Decoder" podcast last Thursday, likening the industry's hiring frenzy to the high-stakes world of professional sports.

"It's definitely going to feel like a transfer market now, like an NBA or something," he said. "There's going to be a few individual stars who are having so much leverage."