The war for top AI talent is hitting frenzied new heights among giants like Meta and OpenAI. But it’s turning out that Anthropic, maker of the popular Claude models, is the place many engineers would rather work. New research from venture firm SignalFire shows that the startup is increasing its engineering organization faster than those competitors and more. The $170 billion AI company is hiring engineers 2.68 times faster than it’s losing them. That number is 2.18 for OpenAI, 2.07 for Meta and 1.17 for Google. To be sure, we shouldn’t expect established players like Meta and Google to grow as fast as the young upstarts, SignalFire said, but Anthropic’s retention advantage does stand out, especially in Silicon Valley, where recruitment efforts have hit a new peak. Meta’s drive this summer to staff its “Superintelligence Labs” unit sparked the most recent round of talent raids with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg often making personal offers to top tier AI talent at places like at OpenAI as well as Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Apple. Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said he won’t match salaries for sky-high offers that come in from Meta, saying to do so would be unfair to the equally talented engineers who weren’t targeted. Amodei made the comments on an episode of the Big Technology Podcast that aired last week. And yet, employees are still staying, he said.

Full report : The AI startup, Anthropic isn’t matching Meta’s sky-high salary offers. It’s still dominating when it comes to engineer retention.