Artificial-intelligence labs including Anthropic, OpenAI and Perplexity are aggressively recruiting entry-level quantitative researchers—talent traditionally snapped up by Wall Street trading desks—according to industry recruiters and company officials. The startups are offering base salaries as high as $300,000, plus equity and other benefits, to recent mathematics, physics and computer-science graduates who once viewed quantitative hedge funds as the premier destination. The pay escalation is being financed by record capital flowing into AI. Global investment in the sector jumped 75.6% to $162.8 billion in the first half of 2025, while OpenAI told investors it plans to spend about $7 billion this year and nearly $17 billion in 2026 on model development and infrastructure. The overlap between skills used to tune large language models and those used in algorithmic trading has narrowed the gap between finance and technology, giving AI companies new leverage in the talent market. Major banks and hedge funds are responding by accelerating recruitment cycles, boosting compensation and touting career-development programs to stem defections. University career centers say candidates now routinely field competing offers from both sectors, driving early-career pay to levels once reserved for experienced portfolio managers. Industry analysts expect the bidding war to persist as AI labs race to commercialize new models and financial firms expand their own machine-learning teams.