Biotech Is Losing the AI Talent War. Money Isn't Why.

A senior ML engineer makes about $681K at OpenAI. $563K at Anthropic. $197K at Pfizer.

Everyone's fix is to pay more. The data says that's the part everyone gets wrong.

A month ago I wrote that biotech is getting out-bid for AI talent and that money won't fix it. This week we tested it: we rebuilt the salary chart from live postings, matched the levels, and added equity (h/t Andrew Dunn at Endpoints News, whose original chart started this).

Three things surprised me.

The base gap is closed at the top. Genentech's senior ML band sits squarely inside what OpenAI and Anthropic pay. Base salary is a solved problem for the best of pharma.

Equity is not. Half the labs' package is stock. Pharma's grants run zero to twelve percent of a package a third the size. No amount of cash closes that.

And the one I didn't expect: you can read job design straight off the postings, and it tracks pay almost perfectly. Companies that design AI roles like research labs post research-lab money. Companies that design AI as internal support post IT money. Same industry, same month, $130K apart.

You cannot outbid the labs. You can out-design them.

Full essay on the Averin blog. Link in comments.