The competition for AI talent among major companies intensifies

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Wang Xiaojun

In a critical period for the discourse on AI technology, tech giants are competing for AI talent in an almost arms race manner. Since the beginning of this year, the conflict has escalated further.

According to Wall Street Insights, on June 16, Tencent launched an algorithm competition, offering a substantial prize pool of millions and recruitment offers to attract global talent. The champion team will receive a prize of 2 million yuan, and the top ten contestants will have direct employment opportunities in Tencent's core business departments.

This is the first time Tencent has used a competition with generous rewards to recruit AI talent since launching its largest recruitment plan in April.

It is reported that this algorithm competition is hosted by Tencent Advertising, with the theme of "full-modal generative recommendation" to reflect cutting-edge AI technology in the industry, and it is also the first generative recommendation algorithm competition in China.

Tencent's determination to invest in AI is evident.

At the earnings conference in March, Tencent announced that it would further increase capital expenditure by 2025, building on last year's record high capital expenditure of 76.7 billion yuan. In terms of R&D, it will continue to invest in self-developed models and accelerate AI application development across various business groups; at the same time, Tencent will also invest in marketing to enhance user awareness and adoption of new AI products, such as Yuanbao.

In the first quarter of this year, Tencent's capital expenditure reached 27.48 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 91%, accounting for 15% of revenue; in addition, Tencent's general and administrative expenses increased by 36% year-on-year to 33.6 billion yuan. This increase, apart from a 4 billion yuan overseas acquisition, mainly comes from increased R&D expenses related to AI.

Tencent's Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng stated, "We believe that during the investment phase of our AI strategy, the operational leverage brought by existing high-quality revenue will help absorb the additional costs generated by these AI-related investments and maintain financial stability."

The financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, Tencent achieved revenue of 180.02 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%; the Non-IFRS net profit attributable to shareholders was 61.329 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%.

After the "convergence and focus" of the past two to three years, driven by AI, Tencent has entered a new round of expansion.

To emerge victorious in this global AI competition, talent can be said to be the most important competitive advantage.

Tencent will inevitably need to attract more AI talent. On April 17, Tencent announced the launch of its largest employment plan in history, aiming to add 28,000 internship positions over three years and increase conversion to employment. In 2025 alone, it will welcome 10,000 campus recruitment interns, with 60% of positions open to technical talent.

Tencent stated that against the backdrop of accelerated implementation of large models, it has intensified recruitment efforts for technical positions in artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, game engines, and digital content, with an unprecedented expansion in technical positions On June 12, Tencent launched the "Qingyun Plan," aimed at recruiting top technical students globally, focusing on talent development in ten cutting-edge technology fields.

It is reported that after being selected as "Qingyun Talents," individuals will be matched with dedicated job mentors, development mentors, and project advisors, along with a personalized growth training plan. They will have access to exclusive resources such as academic conferences, technology conferences, and interdisciplinary research exchanges to fully support their growth.

At the same time, Tencent will offer these technical talents uncapped salaries, along with priority for residency, housing, and various exclusive living benefits.

Of course, it's not just Tencent; this year, tech giants have been ramping up their competition for AI talent.

On June 15, Baidu officially announced the launch of a large-scale AI talent recruitment program targeting graduates of the class of 2026. It is understood that the number of positions in this recruitment plan has increased by over 60% compared to previous years, covering 23 core business departments and 11 types of technical research directions at Baidu, making it the largest recruitment of top AI talent in Baidu's history.

To attract top campus talent, Baidu has also proposed uncapped salary offers.

Additionally, in Alibaba International's campus recruitment launched in April this year for the class of 2026, 80% of the positions are AI-related, including AI algorithms, R&D, and AI product managers. At the same time, Alibaba International has launched the Bravo102 program, aimed at cultivating top AI technology talents globally, breaking the traditional campus recruitment system, allowing candidates to choose projects and teams after passing interviews, and enjoying a green channel for promotions after joining.

In May, JD.com also introduced the "Top Young Technical Talent Program," open to graduates from global universities with master's and doctoral degrees, as well as technical talents who graduated within the last two years. The program offers uncapped salaries, with research directions covering multimodal large models and applications, AI infrastructure, and more.

International giant Meta has also recently been reported to be offering highly attractive salaries to a select few top AI researchers, attempting to build super-intelligent AI.

More than two years after ChatGPT sparked the wave of large AI models, AI applications are experiencing an unprecedented explosion, and the intensity of talent competition is evident.

Talent solution provider Hudson recently released the "2025 Talent Trends Report," indicating that breakthroughs in AI have pushed talent demand to new heights, with the competition for high-end AI talent entering a heated stage, further exacerbating the scarcity of top talent.

Hudson's data shows that after the Spring Festival this year, the recruitment volume in the AI field has increased by approximately 25% year-on-year, especially in areas related to algorithm engineering, algorithm optimization, and AI infrastructure, where recruitment enthusiasm continues to soar.

Against this backdrop, the supply-demand ratio for AI talent is only 0.5, meaning that for every two AI positions, only one suitable candidate can be matched. Particularly in areas such as reinforcement learning, large model algorithms, and multimodal algorithms, there is a shortage of top researchers and engineers.

This imbalance in supply and demand has also directly led to top talents having the power to set their own prices.

According to Hudson's data, the top 20% of AI talents in the industry can see salary increases of 30%-50% when switching jobs, with top researchers and engineers in the reinforcement learning field becoming the focal point of competition among leading companies. Meanwhile, those who have published papers in top international journals dominate the talent market, possessing far greater bargaining power than other competitors Even interns in AI-related positions have seen their value soar, with monthly incomes exceeding 10,000 yuan becoming quite common.

Against this backdrop, in order to attract AI talent, companies like Tencent, Baidu, and JD.com have also had to present the strategy of offering unlimited salaries as a bargaining chip.

This AI competition has entered the knockout stage, and to become the ultimate winner, all companies must show enough sincerity to attract the world's top talents