Indian-origin CEO offers lucrative $600K salaries to laid-off Meta AI employees in San Francisco

Sudarshan Kamath, the founder of Smallest AI and an IIT alumnus based in the US, has stepped forward with job opportunities for engineers affected by recent layoffs at Meta. Following Meta’s decision to cut 600 roles primarily from its AI teams, Kamath took to social media inviting those impacted to apply for openings at his startup.

The reductions mainly hit employees working within Meta’s AI infrastructure group, the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR), and other product development areas.

In his announcement, Kamath said, “We are actively hiring for our speech technology team in San Francisco. If you’ve been let go by Meta, we encourage you to consider joining Smallest AI.”
 

He also shared details on compensation, noting that the base salary for these positions could range between $200,000 and $600,000, supplemented with equity incentives.

The upper end of this pay scale offers major earning potential, but candidates must meet certain criteria. Kamath outlined the need for expertise in speech evaluation, speech generation and full duplex speech-to-speech systems. He emphasised that the ideal hires should be exceptionally talented and driven.

Interested applicants with the right experience were urged to contact Kamath directly.

Kamath is part of a growing number of startup leaders who have reached out to Meta’s displaced AI workforce.

Ben Taylor, founder of Spec, also addressed the layoffs: “Your work has influenced how intelligence is understood. At Spec, we’re creating ambient intelligence solutions that focus on privacy and human context. If you are a former Meta AI employee looking for new challenges, my DMs are open.”

Similarly, Lucas Atkins of Arcee AI invited Meta’s Gen AI layoffs to contribute. “If you were recently laid off from Meta Gen AI, please reach out. Join us in developing the next generation of open-source Apache-2.0 models.”
 

Carina Hong from Axiom expressed support for the laid-off talent, saying, “Your expertise is world-class. We have reviewed your work and believe you deserve a new place to call home.”