How Musk and OpenAI attract AI talent through pizza

The exchange began last weekend, when Musk reshared a post by an xAI engineer named Dustin. In particular, this person said the company operates comfortably, with no administrative management costs, no paperwork requirements, and no approval process. “You determine what needs to be built and build it. There is no organizational burden, no need to write documents. You just do the work,” this person wrote.

“Join xAI,” Musk shared and wrote.

“Or join Codex,” Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI’s Codex technical lead, also retweeted the article and invited to join his company. OpenAI works “with many of the same principles,” Sottiaux said. “Let’s look on the bright side, we have pizza,” he continued.

“But how good is your wood-fired pizza?”, Musk replied.

The story turns to ingredients and how xAI and OpenAI chefs make pizza. “What about the dough? It can’t be done quickly, it takes at least 24 hours to make. Our chef is extremely good,” Sottiaux responded.

“Our chef is so good that God looked down at the dish and said: This is my best creation,” Musk replied.

“But after tasting a bite, he was not completely satisfied and asked our chef to improve the SoTA ‘dish’,” Sottiaux said, turning to OpenAI’s AI promotion, referring to SoTA (State of The Art) – a term for techniques, AI models or advanced technology, representing the pinnacle of development in a field. “Our chef responded to the request, and created a formula to accelerate the development of super artificial intelligence AGI.”

Musk did not comment further afterward.

Theo Business Insiderthe exchange between Musk and Sottiaux sounded humorous and cheerful about getting free pizza for lunch. But deep inside, it reflects a trend taking place in Silicon Valley: technology companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI or xAI are promoting corporate culture to attract elite AI engineers with high-end compensation packages that can reach hundreds of millions of dollars along with working benefits, such as enjoying the best food at the office.

Musk being “friendly” with OpenAI employees is also a rare moment. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but left in 2018 after an unsuccessful attempt to gain control, then returned to criticize the company and CEO Sam Altman for breaking the “founders agreement”. The billionaire also evaluated OpenAI’s cooperation with Microsoft and pursuit of profits as a violation of its original principles, even demanding compensation of 134 billion USD for his investment.