In the US AI engineers' median total base pay is about $134,188; depending on experience and location, figures span roughly from around $103,000 to about $172,000, with higher medians in cities like San Francisco (approximately $164,500), while researchers average just under $100,000.
This big difference is pulling many experts away from university jobs and into industry roles.

AI companies aren't just paying more. They're also giving researchers access to better funding, bigger datasets, and serious computing power.
That's made machine learning professors especially valuable in tech, leaving universities struggling to keep up.

With so much talent moving into private companies, there's concern that cutting-edge research could become less open and more exclusive.
While industry investment is speeding up progress in AI, it's also changing where (and how) breakthroughs happen.