One chart explains why Apple needed its OpenAI partnership

Apple has made a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT with its iPhone and hopefully catch up to its tech peers in the AI race, Bloomberg reports. But why does Apple, which has gobs of cash and a years-long head-start with Siri need to play catch-up?

One reason could be that it hasn’t hired as many AI engineers as its peers. Data from tech compensation platform Levels.fyi shows that from January-May of 2024, 63 Apple AI engineers submitted employment information to the site — about a third of the number who did for Facebook and under a quarter of the number who did for Google and Amazon (who are all competing in the AI space). Notably, the site has recorded about the same number of AI engineers for Apple as Microsoft, which also has a partnership with OpenAI.

Typically people go to Levels.fyi when job hunting, and the site asks for employment information both during and after their searches. Of course, while this data wouldn’t include everyone these tech companies employ as AI engineers, it gives a relative sense of what hiring is like at these companies. The number of submissions for AI engineers was up at all companies from the same period last year.

That Apple hasn’t spent as heavily on AI talent as its peers tracks. More broadly we know that Apple’s spending on R&D has only recently returned to pre-iPhone levels, and its spending relative to sales is lower than its peers.

It’s also tough and expensive to hire AI talent these days.

As Levels.fyi founder Zuhayeer Musa told Sherwood recently, “Everyone trying to step into this game makes it very competitive for this limited pool of talent.”