The AI talent war is coming for Big Tech’s Asia executives

Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence talent wars are now playing out in Asia. OpenAI and Anthropic are poaching top talent from U.S. tech giants including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to build teams in countries like India and Singapore to sell their products and strengthen engagement with policymakers. Last month, Meta’s India and Southeast Asia vice president, Sandhya Devanathan, left the company after a decade to join OpenAI as vice president for Southeast Asia and Australia. This was at least the ninth hire by a U.S. AI giant from an American big tech firm in Asia in the past year. “The number of executives in India who’ve actually run a country-level P&L [profit and loss] for a global tech company, negotiated with Indian regulators, and built enterprise trust at scale is small, maybe a few hundred people across all of Big Tech India,” Arjun Jaggi, an applied AI researcher and executive adviser to Fortune 500 companies, told Rest of World. OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for interviews with their recent hires, or to questions about their Asia-Pacific hiring strategy. AI hiring trends In the U.S., frontier AI labs have mostly competed for the best researchers and engineers. In Asia, however, the more sought-after executives are those who can translate AI capabilities into market adoption as the competition moves from building the best models to capturing new markets. In new markets, companies need leaders who can focus on partnerships, policy, and business development, Deepali Vyas, global head of data and AI executive search at talent advisory firm ZRG Partners, told Rest of World. Vyas works with Fortune 500 companies to scout talent for executive roles. “Once a company decides [a region] is a strategic growth market, you start looking for executives who can essentially operate as mini-CEOs,” she said. A professional with experience working at companies like Microsoft, Google, or Uber in Asia has an understanding of how Silicon Valley’s products can be scaled while navigating local landscapes, making them valuable to AI companies. Experts believe AI companies’ focus is less on poaching from big tech firms and more on seeking individuals who have such experience. The prized asset is not generic familiarity with American technology but dual institutional literacy.”Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research OpenAI’s first hire in India, Pragya Mishra, came from Truecaller. Her resume, though, includes being the first WhatsApp hire in India. OpenAI’s Asia-Pacific director, Kiran Mani, came from India’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, JioStar, in March. Mani had previously worked at Google for 13 years. Devanathan’s Meta experience spans consumer platforms, gaming, commerce, business messaging, payments, advertisers, and partnerships. “The prized asset is not generic familiarity with American technology but dual institutional literacy: knowing how a U.S.-headquartered company allocates capital and risk, and knowing how Indian customers, governments, and partners turn global strategy into local reality,” Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, told Rest of World. The need to dip into the same talent pool also arises because of a shortage of skilled leaders. “At the leadership level, the scarcity is more pronounced because experience cannot be created overnight. Most of the large technology companies are increasingly competing for the same relatively small group of proven executives,” Neeti Sharma, CEO of TeamLease Digital, the staff and tech recruitment arm of human resources firm TeamLease Services, told Rest of World. “Over time, the pool will expand as leaders emerge from GCCs [Global Capability Center], SaaS [software-as-a-service] companies, startups, and digital businesses.”