#2 AI Labs: Anthropic sets the pace in the talent race

> November 2022 didn’t just mark the launch of ChatGPT—it kicked off the AI talent race. We analyzed retention across top AI labs, and one clear leader emerged: Anthropic. An impressive 80% of employees hired at least 2 years ago at Anthropic were still at the company at the end of their second year—a figure that stands out in an industry known for high turnover. DeepMind follows closely at 78%, while OpenAI’s retention trails at 67% but remains on par with large FAANG companies like Meta (64%).

> Talent poaching with precision: Anthropic is siphoning top talent from two of its biggest rivals: OpenAI and DeepMind. Engineers are 8 times more likely to leave OpenAI for Anthropic than the reverse. From DeepMind, the ratio is nearly 11:1 in Anthropic’s favor. Some of that’s expected—Anthropic is the hot new startup, while DeepMind’s larger, tenured team is ripe for movement. But the scale of the shift is striking.