Google just scored a big win in the AI talent war

• Google hired OpenAI's former head of developer relations, Logan Kilpatrick, for its AI Studio.
• Some observers say it's a big win for Google to secure OpenAI's "secret weapon."
• Kilpatrick's move comes as Big Tech firms vie for top expertise in an AI talent war.

Google has a new feather in its cap after luring OpenAI's former head of developer relations.

Logan Kilpatrick, who left OpenAI last month, announced on Tuesday that he's joining Google to "lead product for AI Studio and support the Gemini API."

The move shows the transfer window of AI expertise is firmly open as Big Tech companies battle it out to lure top AI talent.

Microsoft hired AI veteran Mustafa Suleyman last month to lead its AI efforts. About 70 Inflection AI employees joined the cofounder in jumping ship to bat for Satya Nadella's team.

Bruce Monaco, cofounder of the think tank Institute for AI Transformation cofounder, told Business Insider that Kilpatrick's strong relationships with developers made him a "secret weapon" for Google.

Monaco said this was important because developers are the ones creating wrappers and the infrastructure.

Google AI Studio lets developers integrate Gemini with APIs to create generative AI applications that are also known as "wrappers".

When Kilpatrick left OpenAI in March, several developers took to its developer forum to thank him for his help and impact on the community.

In the post announcing his new role, Kilpatrick said he will help "make Google the best home for developers building with AI" and that he's "not going to settle for anything less."

Intel's senior AI developers community lead, Ryan Carson, wrote on X: "Things are movin' and shakin' in the AI industry. Huge win for Google to get Logan. He's a star."

Some firms are going to great lengths to secure some of the brightest minds in tech. Mark Zuckerberg has been sending personal emails to try to poach researchers from Google's DeepMind. Meanwhile, Google cofounder Sergey Brin called a Google employee who was considering leaving to turn down an offer at OpenAI.

OpenAI has previously hired more than 12 of Google's AI employees, and five former Google researchers worked on ChatGPT before its launch.

Firms are now offering better compensation packages to win them over. Workers who tick the right boxes for employers can secure pay packets of up to $1 million, The Verge reported in January.

But it's not just a big compensation package some are after. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, who's been vocal about its difficulty in recruiting talent, recently said firms also have to offer "immediate availability of compute" to attract workers.

He said: "I tried to hire a very senior researcher from Meta, and you know what they said? 'Come back to me when you have 10,000 H100 GPUs.'"

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.