NewsFlash Articles Data Fundraising BlockBeats Pro

AI Giant Interns' Daily Salary Revealed: Anthropic Exceeds $5000, While Kimi Can Only Make It to the Fourth Tier

Read this article in 23 Minutes

At a major tech company in the United States, as an ordinary technical intern, the amount earned per week may be more than the monthly salary of many white-collar elites in China.

Original Title: "AI Giant Intern Daily Salary Revealed: Anthropic Exceeds ¥5000, Kimi Only in Fourth Tier"
Original Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

In 2026, the "baseline" for domestic university student internships is a monthly median salary of ¥5000, which can reach ¥10,000 for a technology position in a first-tier city.

Embracing the era of early adoption and accepting professional misjudgments, I wasn't too bothered until I came across—

An AI company intern, earning over ¥5000 in a day... in a day? 5000?

It was unbearable. I casually surveyed the daily intern salaries of 12 global AI giants, from OpenAI and Anthropic to ByteDance and DeepSeek, from official career pages to websites like levels.fyi and Glassdoor.

After cross-referencing with employee revelations on domestic social media, I found that this kind of high salary is not unique to just one company. One can only say: The talent war in the AI industry has entered a white-hot stage.

Next, I mixed and ranked top AI companies from both domestic and international markets, categorizing them from highly sought-after to less popular (there is no "pull" level), possibly completely altering your impression of the term "intern."

Ceiling: This Is Not Just an Intern, This Is a Respected AI Researcher

Let's first look at the top two "divine positions," where the daily salary exceeds the ¥5000 mark.

First place, OpenAI Residency, with a daily salary of approximately ¥5625.

A monthly salary of $18,333, equivalent to over ¥120,000. As stated on the OpenAI official website, across various language pages, there is no doubt about it.

This is a 6-month full-time research project where participants are directly assigned to core teams working on large-scale models, reinforcement learning, alignment, security, etc., alongside regular researchers. After the project ends, they can even transition to full-time roles.

In essence, this is OpenAI's "young genius reserve," nurturing the future backbone of the AI field, shining brightly for the cause of AGI. Regarding the work environment, interns work directly at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters, are required to be present at least 3 days a week, and receive compensation almost equivalent to that of internal OpenAI researchers.

Of course, such researchers are the cream of the crop. OpenAI recently launched a short-term "Safety Fellows" training program similar to Anthropic's top internship program, which is set to run from September 14, 2026, to February 5, 2027.

In second place, Anthropic AI Safety Fellows, with a daily salary of about $5198.

A weekly salary of $3850, both listed clearly on the Anthropic website and official alignment blog, is the most reliable data point in this survey.

A 4-month project, working 40 hours per week. In addition to the salary, each person receives an additional $15,000 in computational power funding per month—yes, you read that right, computational power funding, $15,000 per month for whatever you want to compute. This can also be considered a special benefit from the AI giant, achieving a phased implementation of "Token Freedom."

What is the level of the first batch of students? Over 80% have published papers, and over 40% have transitioned to full-time positions directly. The most outrageous part is the salary increase: in the first batch of 2024, the weekly salary was only $2100, which jumped directly to $3850 in 2026, an increase of over 80% in just two years. The scarcity of true AI talent can be understood just by looking at this salary increase.

These two positions share a common feature: extremely high thresholds, very few spots, essentially "pre-recruitment"—under the guise of interns, they are snatching the future's top researchers.

The Hottest Trend: U.S. Tech Interns Earn More Weekly Than Average Monthly Salary

After looking at the ceiling, let's take a look at the regular interns in U.S. tech companies. Note, these are "regular" interns, not part of any special talent program.

Meta, with a daily salary of about $3780. An hourly wage of $70, corroborated by levels.fyi and Glassdoor, one reporting $70 and the other ranging from $56 to $82 (average $67), which is quite consistent. The official job description provides a monthly salary range of $7188 to $12134, with an additional housing subsidy of around $2600 per month.

Google, with a daily salary of about $3400. An hourly wage of $62.98, equivalent to an annual salary range of $92,000 to $122,000 for undergraduate positions and $113,000 to $150,000 for doctoral positions. There are regional differences, with roughly $56.73 per hour in Mountain View, and around $50 in Seattle.

NVIDIA USA, daily salary approximately $2106. This is the average, with an hourly rate of $39, but NVIDIA's official JD has a wide range, with undergraduate SWE ranging from $20 to $71, and doctoral research positions from $30 to $94—if you have a Ph.D., the hourly rate ceiling is $94, and the daily salary goes straight to over 5000.

OpenAI Non-technical Intern, daily salary approximately $1944. GTM Strategy Intern, with an hourly rate of only $36, is only about 60% of the technical intern's hourly rate, but still belongs to the second tier in the tech field.

Did you notice? Working as an ordinary technical intern at a big tech company in the U.S., the amount you earn in a week may be more than the monthly salary of many white-collar elites in China.

Creme de la Creme: Domestic Tech Giants Catching Up, ByteDance Offers $2000 a Day

After talking about the U.S., let's look at China.

Chinese tech giants' investment in top talent has begun to rapidly approach that of U.S. AI giants.

ByteDance Top Seed Research Internship, daily salary $2000.

Yes, you read that right, $2000 a day, which is not far behind the monthly salary of the "general public."

The media reported: "Compared to DeepSeek's $500 a day internship salary, ByteDance has raised the standard to $2000 a day." This number was subsequently confirmed repeatedly by more internet media. Calculated based on 20 days of attendance per month, the monthly salary is $40,000.

Who does this project recruit? Top-notch master's and doctoral students. After entering, they can choose their own research topics, have equal rights as regular employees, and the mentor lineup even includes Wu Yonghui, the research vice president poached from Google DeepMind in February 2025.

Someone put it bluntly: the uniform standard for ByteDance's ordinary interns at $500 a day, "excluding high-end talent programs like Cloud Walk and TopSeed, where salaries are generally higher."

Xiaomi Top Internship - Large Model Training Framework, daily salary $500 to $1000; Intelligent Entity Researcher - MiMo, daily salary $1000-1100.

A position posted on a job recruitment website, mainly targeting master's students, with job responsibilities including participating in the development of a multi-billion-parameter large-scale model training engine, AI agent research, and more.

By comparison, an ordinary large-scale model algorithm intern at Xiaomi receives only 300 to 400 yuan per day—a difference of more than double within the same company.

This is the current situation in China's AI industry: ordinary positions follow market rates, but as long as you are a "top talent," money is not a problem.

NPC Level: The "AI Four Little Dragons" with Unlimited Opportunities, Kimi, and Zhipu are Still Striving

All the aforementioned are elite players. What is the actual salary level for the vast majority of AI interns?

Odaily selected a few of the most popular "AI representative companies" to discuss.

DeepSeek (Hangzhou Deep Seek), an ordinary AGI large-scale model intern, has a daily salary of 500 to 1000 yuan. This figure has been confirmed by many media reports and is also public information on the DeepSeek recruitment platform. Interns from out of town receive an additional 3000 yuan housing allowance per month. Based on 22 days, the monthly salary ranges from 11,000 to 22,000 yuan.

As a side note, DeepSeek's full-time deep learning researcher has a monthly salary of 80,000 to 110,000 yuan with 14 paychecks, and an annual salary of up to 1.54 million—there is a difference of an order of magnitude between interns and full-time employees.

Additionally, the previously reported "DeepSeek Tsinghua Yao Class intern with a pre-tax daily salary of 5500 yuan" on social media is clearly an extreme outlier, which we will not delve into further at this point.

Bytedance ordinary R&D/algorithm interns have a daily salary of 500 yuan. Starting from January 1st this year, ByteDance has unified the daily salary of technical and product interns to 500, claiming it is to "increase investment in talent, enhance salary competitiveness, and improve stock incentive programs," ensuring that "employee compensation and incentive rewards lead top-tier levels globally in all markets."

Of course, following the practice of internet giants, they also provide three meals a day, housing subsidies, and some AI positions can reach 550 yuan.

MiniMax, multi-modal/algorithm interns, have a daily salary of over 350 to 600 yuan. Technical internships generally range from 350 to 500, while Master's SP internships can go over 600; operations and non-technical positions are only 150 to 200. MiniMax has a unique feature for a startup: nearly all employees have near full ownership, with 385 employees almost all having a stake, so although the cash may not be the highest, the overall benefits may not necessarily be inferior.

Alibaba's Thousand Whys AI R&D, Daily Salary of 350 to 550 RMB. Undergraduates 350, Masters 400, plus a monthly housing subsidy of 2000; AI Agent development positions can range from 450 to 600, AI R&D engineers from 500 to 550. For those hired from another city, there is also a one-week free accommodation benefit.

NVIDIA China, Deep Learning Architecture/CUDA Intern, Daily Salary of 400 to 800 RMB. The positions on the recruitment website offer only 250 to 300 for regular testing positions.

Kimi (Dark Side of the Moon), Search Recommendation Algorithm/RL Internship Position, Daily Salary of 400 to 450 RMB. The daily salary for product operation positions is between 250 to 350. Although Kimi has been quite successful after the release of K3, showing a strong outward expansion and financing momentum, the internship salary is indeed not high. However, they are also preparing a "Transcendence Plan" for top talents of the 27th cohort, offering stock options directly. In addition, over 90% of the company's open positions have a monthly salary of over 30,000 RMB, with an average salary for Master's graduates exceeding 44,000 RMB. The treatment for regular employees is relatively good.

Xiaomi's Ordinary Large Model Algorithm Intern, Daily Salary of 300 to 400 RMB. As mentioned earlier, it is more than double the positions of "top internships," but in the current job market environment, it is already considered top-tier.

Zhipu AI, Large Model Algorithm Framework Intern, Daily Salary of 200 to 300 RMB. The cash salary is the lowest range in this survey. But don't feel too sorry for them—Zhipu employees hold more than 51% of the shares, out of 883 employees, 452 have equity. When the market value reaches 323.2 billion Hong Kong dollars, the core backbone staff have a net worth of over 100 million, and even ordinary shareholders have holdings worth tens of millions. With less cash and more stock options, it depends on whether the interns want to share the pie or not.

The Truth Behind DeepSeek Interns' Daily Salary of 5500 RMB: Don't Mistake Geniuses for Radishes

Here, we must specifically discuss the wildly circulated DeepSeek 5500 RMB/day story.

The story originated from a tweet on X platform, where the blogger claimed, "Tsinghua Yao Class student reveals DeepSeek offer, internship salary of 5500 RMB before tax." Once this news was out, the entire AI community was buzzing about this number—calculating based on 22 working days, an intern could earn a monthly salary of 120,000 RMB, an annual salary exceeding 1.3 million RMB, surpassing OpenAI and Anthropic globally.

However, based on comprehensive information from the internet and media reports, we have concluded that: 「DeepSeek Company has not provided official confirmation, and this is merely a top-tier special case treatment rumored within the AI community.」

Therefore, we did not include this particular case of a daily salary of 5500 yuan in our ranking, only showcasing it as a side note. DeepSeek's officially announced standard is a daily rate ranging from 500 to 1000 yuan, which is the reliable figure cross-checked by sources.

Yes, there is one more thing worth mentioning separately—To prevent the salaries of top interns from being too high and causing an inverted salary structure for senior employees, DeepSeek has established a "Senior Employee Rating System"—the amount new hires can receive is determined by senior employee ratings. This also indirectly indicates that high-paying exceptions in the AI industry do exist, but they are by no means a common occurrence.

More Truths

After digging into the intern salary data of a dozen AI companies, I had a few particularly strong feelings.

First, the salary disparity in the AI industry is much more severe than imagined. On the same day, in the same industry, some people earn a daily salary of 5000 while others earn 200, a difference of 25 times. The world of top talent and ordinary practitioners is completely different.

Second, the salary gap between AI giants in China and the U.S. remains significant. American giant companies pay ordinary interns a daily salary ranging from 2000 to nearly 4000 yuan, while Chinese giant companies pay ordinary positions from 350 to 550, a difference of 6 to 8 times. This includes exchange rate effects and cost of living differences, but people are living beings, especially young people.

Third, Chinese AI companies are desperately trying to catch up with overseas giants through "special plans." Byte Top Seed's 2000 yuan per day is a clear signal—Chinese companies are willing to pay prices close to those in the U.S. for top talent. However, this only covers a very small number of people, with most positions remaining the same.

Fourth, cash is only a part of it; options are the real highlight. Zhìpǔ has the lowest cash but the highest shareholding ratio, MiniMax has almost all employees holding shares, and Kimi offers options to retain talent. In the AI industry, where the next hundred billion or even trillion-dollar market cap company could emerge at any time, the value of options may be even higher than a year's salary.

Do you still remember how much you were paid per day during your internship? If it was $200 a day, don't be discouraged. The interns at Wisdom Spectrum also start at $200, although they may also have millions of dollars in stock options. If it was $500, don't be too proud either. The daily salary for a regular intern at Byte is also $500, but the Top Seed Program interns have seen a pay increase of 4 times...

In the AI industry, which is currently experiencing rapid growth, the one thing in abundance is wealth creation miracles. What is lacking the most are those who can create miracles time and time again.