Its not uncommon for PhD hires from top schools to be paid upper 6figs (i.e 600k+) of real money, according to a few friends of mine doing PhDs at top schools.

Its not uncommon for PhD hires from top schools to be paid upper 6figs (i.e 600k+) of real money, according to a few friends of mine doing PhDs at top schools. OpenAI is probably the only one thats truly "competitive." I also (personally) know of several non-ML offers that were substantially higher than FAANG. Though even within FAANG only Meta and maybe Google (and Amazon at hogher levels) are very competitive. Meta and Google likely have better growth prospects though with better refreshers, bonuses, stock growth, etc. But up front Tesla AI offers are definitely very strong. Even then I'm not sure its worth the stress.