Hiring, Venture Capital, and the Astronomic Growth of Generative AI
Money is pouring into the space and this is just the start.
Hey y’all!
I really do appreciate every single subscriber since I’m starting entirely from scratch and, as I shared in my “Hello World” post, I’d like to get to 100 subscribers by the end of January — can you help me reach my goal? I’d appreciate it!
I just crossed 10 and I’m feeling the love!
✌(-‿-)✌
— Summer
One of the reasons I’m so excited by this growing space — outside my own morbid, technological curiosity — is because the most exciting advancements for humanity will come about via artificial intelligence. And those who are “in” the industry the earliest (and thus the longest) will reap the benefits of their investment.
Two high forms of signal, oftentimes correlated, is the amount of companies hiring employees with AI-centric skills and the amount of venture capital money that is being invested into companies that are advancing the field.
I’ve been tracking both and want to share a few findings that hopefully will encourage you to not only consider learning more about the space but also, if you can, start working in the field more directly. Follow the money my friends.
For starters, let’s take a look at the high-level venture capital scene: Investments topped more than $18 billion by behemoths such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft which represented two-thirds of all global venture investment into generative AI startups, businesses, and internal programs (via Financial Times).
But those are just 3 (!!!) companies! Proper and more traditional venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, and many, many more.
The growth has been parabolic and there’s no reason to see this trend stopping any time soon as more folks begin to onramp into the future.
Of course, most of the smaller and early-stage companies will be eaten up or die due to lack of customer growth and revenue but this doesn’t matter much for those who are looking to build a portfolio of skills that will serve them for a very long time.
So what about companies? There are a few folks who are starting to track this industry data and Revealera is one. They have an assortment of statistics on their homepage but one of their founders has been sharing some additional metrics that aren’t hard to believe.
Here are some that’s been shared:
Even in my own search for technical jobs I’ve seen this growth blast through the roof and even entry level jobs are starting to want and desire some background and experience. Getting started with your own local installation of Stable Diffusion, for instance, is one way to dive into the more technical components of this world.
The biggest players are obviously hiring, as I’ve mentioned before, and are looking for all types of employees, not just in the software engineering or technically-bound roles.
Speaking from a software engineer’s perspective, roles adjacent to software development (like MLOps) we’ve seen the same type of metric:
Again, this isn’t just relevant to “high tech” companies (although comprising of more than 25% according to stats) you can see that FinTech and Healthcare are growing quickly as well. I personally did a little work in HealthTech and we pivoted from a more classic multi-sided SaaS platform to a GenAI interface to take advantage of this growing demand. And, to be completely frank, to gather a bit more steam for the process of raising venture capital.
Again, follow the money.
If you’re in Consumer, Real Estate, Basic Materials, Energy, and other industries you can put a solid bet that they will be growing rapidly as interests and (new) applications are discovered for GenAI. Are you ready for it? Legal is another sector that’s been growing fast as well and I only know this because I have a handful of friends who are attorneys and lawyers who have seen the use of AI head towards the new and exciting boomtown.
Of course, money, money, money. If you want to increase your own bank account and overall compensation there’s really no better time to get into the space — organizations are paying top-dollar for talent right now for the right skills.
Below you’ll see some of the skills that might interest you as you continue to do your own research as to where you might start:
More evidence and as Weng shares:
How much $$$ are companies paying for GenAI talent? A lot :) In fact, among all technical skills/technologies we tracked, jobs mentioning “Generative AI” or “LLMs” had the highest average base salary offered, with an average of $200,837/year.
With the average being over $200,000 dollars you really can’t be sad about any of this if you’re in the field proper.
I hope you’re convinced and encouraged! Just like “the cloud” took over the technology world — and now every company is a cloud company — I imagine the same type of dynamic playing out where every company will become an GenAI company. The question isn’t “if” but “when” and the folks who are first to experience and build skills in these areas will profit.
Now’s the time. Follow the money and you’ll be handsomely rewarded.
✌(-‿-)✌
— Summer
