AI engineers are in high demand and can now ask for nearly double the salary they received last year. Companies large and small are competing to retain the top AI talent, sending salaries spiralling even further. An advertisement from Amazon offers up to $260,000 for a senior applied scientist specialising in generative AI. Google is advertising for a machine learning engineer job paying a base salary of up to $263,000. Economic conditions have played a large part in this gold rush, as investors have driven up the value of companies seen to have an advantage in AI and its related technologies.