AI巨头实习生日薪揭秘：Anthropic超5000元，Kimi只能排第四梯队
- 核心观点：全球AI巨头实习生薪酬呈现显著分层，顶尖人才日薪可达5000元以上，而普通岗位仅200-1000元，行业“抢人大战”白热化，中美薪酬差距仍达6-8倍。
- 关键要素：
- OpenAI Residency项目月薪1.8万美元（日薪约5625元），面向核心团队研究岗位，门槛极高，本质为顶尖研究员“预招聘”。
- Anthropic AI安全研究员周薪3850美元（日薪约5198元），另配每月1.5万美元算力经费，首期学员超80%有论文发表，两年薪资涨幅超80%。
- 美国常规技术实习岗：Meta日薪约3780元，Google约3400元，英伟达均值2106元但博士岗上限可达5000元以上，均含额外补贴。
- 中国顶尖专项计划：字节跳动Top Seed日薪2000元，远超普通实习生500元标准；小米顶尖岗日薪1000-1100元，为普通岗的3倍。
- 中国普通岗水平：DeepSeek日薪500-1000元，阿里350-550元，智谱200-300元，但部分公司以高比例员工持股或期权激励（如智谱45%员工持股）作为长期补偿。
- 网传DeepSeek实习生日薪5500元未经官方确认，属顶尖个例；公司还设“老员工打分制”缓解薪资倒挂问题。
Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010 )
In 2026, the "baseline" for internship salaries of domestic college students is a median monthly salary of 5,000 RMB. If you're in a first-tier city and working a tech role, you could reach 10,000 RMB.
Having long accepted the hand I was dealt by the era and my choice of major, I wasn't particularly bothered—until I scrolled past a post about an AI company intern making over 5,000 RMB a day... a day? 5,000?
That stung. So I went ahead and dug into the daily internship pay at 12 major AI companies worldwide, from OpenAI and Anthropic to ByteDance and DeepSeek. I cross-referenced official job postings, salary aggregation sites like levels.fyi and Glassdoor (Editor's note: salary lookup websites, similar to a US version of Boss Zhipin combined with Maimai), and employee leaks on domestic social media.
Turns out, this kind of high pay isn't limited to just one company. Suffice it to say: the war for talent in the AI industry has entered a white-hot phase.
Below, I've mixed domestic and international AI giants into a ranking—from "absolutely crushing it" to "mildly crushing it" (there's no "failing" tier)—which might completely upend your perception of what it means to be an "intern."
The Ceiling: These Aren't Intern Grunts, These Are Distinguished AI Researchers
First, let's look at the two most elite "dream positions," both with daily pay exceeding the 5,000 RMB mark.
Number one, OpenAI Residency, with a daily rate of approximately 5,625 RMB.
With a monthly salary of $18,333 USD, equivalent to over 120,000 RMB. It's stated on OpenAI's official website across multiple language versions, so this is confirmed.
This is a 6-month full-time research program. Participants are assigned directly to core teams working on large language models, reinforcement learning, alignment, and safety, collaborating with full-time researchers. Upon completion, there's the potential to transition to a full-time role.
In essence, this is OpenAI's "genius preparatory program," cultivating the future pillars of the AI field, dedicated to advancing the cause of AGI. As for the work environment, you're based directly at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters, with a minimum of 3 days on-site per week. The compensation and benefits are nearly equivalent to those of internal OpenAI research staff.
Of course, these researchers are the cream of the crop, selected from the best. OpenAI recently also launched a short-term "Safety Fellowship" training program, similar to Anthropic's top intern program, scheduled to open from September 14, 2026, to February 5, 2027.
Number two, Anthropic AI Safety Fellows, with a daily rate of approximately 5,198 RMB.
With a weekly salary of $3,850 USD, clearly listed on the Anthropic official website and the official alignment blog, this is the most credible data point in our research.
This is a 4-month program with a 40-hour work week. In addition to the salary, each participant receives a $15,000 monthly compute budget—yes, you read that right, a compute budget of fifteen thousand dollars a month, to use however you see fit. It's a unique perk of the big AI labs, essentially providing a stage of "Token freedom."
What's the caliber of the first cohort? Over 80% have published papers, and over 40% transitioned directly to full-time roles. Even more striking is the pay increase: the first cohort in 2024 earned a weekly salary of $2,100, which jumped to $3,850 by 2026—an increase of over 80% in just two years. If you want to gauge just how scarce true AI talent is, look no further than this growth.
These two positions share a common trait: extremely high barriers to entry, very limited slots, and they are essentially "pre-hiring"—using the guise of internships to secure future top-tier researchers.
Crushing It: US Big Tech Interns Earn More Per Week Than Most People Make in a Month
Having looked at the ceiling, let's examine the standard internships at US tech giants. Note, these are "standard" roles, not special talent programs.
Meta, with a daily rate of approximately 3,780 RMB. At $70 per hour, this is corroborated by both levels.fyi and Glassdoor, with one reporting 70 and the other reporting 56 to 82 (average 67). The official JD lists a monthly salary range of $7,188 to $12,134, plus an additional monthly housing allowance of around $2,600.
Google, with a daily rate of approximately 3,400 RMB. At $62.98 per hour, the annualized pay for undergraduate roles is between $92,000 and $122,000, and for PhD roles, between $113,000 and $150,000. This varies by location; for instance, it's about $56.73 per hour at the Mountain View headquarters and around $50 in Seattle.
NVIDIA US, with a daily rate of approximately 2,106 RMB. This is the average, at $39 per hour, but the range on NVIDIA's official JD is wide: undergraduate SWE roles span from $20 to $71 per hour, and PhD research roles from $30 to $94—if you're a PhD candidate, the upper limit is $94 per hour, pushing your daily rate to over 5,000.
OpenAI Non-Technical Interns, with a daily rate of approximately 1,944 RMB. A GTM Strategy Intern earns only $36 per hour, which is about 60% of the hourly rate for technical interns, though it still places them in the second tier within the tech sector.
Notice the pattern? A standard technical intern at a US big tech company can earn more in a week than many white-collar professionals in China make in a month.
Top-Tier Level: Chinese Tech Giants Catching Up, ByteDance Offers 2,000 RMB a Day
Now, shifting our focus to China.
Chinese tech giants have begun rapidly closing the gap with US AI leaders in their investment in top-tier talent.
ByteDance's Top Seed Research Intern Program offers a daily rate of 2,000 RMB.
Yes, you read that correctly: 2,000 RMB a day, which rivals the monthly salary of "the masses."
As the media reported: "Compared to DeepSeek's 500 RMB daily internship wage, ByteDance has raised the standard to 2,000 RMB a day." This figure has since been repeatedly confirmed by numerous internet media outlets. Based on 20 working days per month, that's a monthly salary of 40,000 RMB.
Who is this program recruiting? Top-tier current master's and PhD students. Once accepted, you can define your own research topics, have the same permissions as full-time employees, and the mentorship roster even includes Wu Yonghui, a Research VP recruited from Google DeepMind in February 2025.
Some have put it bluntly: ByteDance's standard 500 RMB daily rate for regular interns "does not apply to elite talent programs like Jindouyun or TopSeed; these programs typically pay significantly more."
Xiaomi's Top-Tier Internship in LLM Training Frameworks offers a daily rate of 500 to 1,000 RMB; its Agent Researcher (MiMo) role pays 1,000-1,100 RMB per day.
These positions, listed on job boards, primarily target master's students and involve work on developing training engines for hundred-billion-parameter large language models, agent research, and similar tasks.
For comparison, Xiaomi's regular LLM algorithm interns earn only 300 to 400 RMB per day—a more than two-fold difference within the same company.
This is the current state of China's AI industry: standard positions are still priced at market rates, but if you're "top-tier talent," money is no object.
NPC Level: The "AI Dragon" Challengers with Unlimited Potential, Kimi and Zhipu, Are Still Striving
What we've discussed so far is a game for a select few elites. What's the actual salary level for the vast majority of AI interns?
Odaily Planet Daily has selected a few of the most prominent "representative AI companies" to discuss.
DeepSeek (Hangzhou DeepSeek), regular AGI LLM intern, daily rate of 500 to 1,000 RMB. This figure has been confirmed by numerous media reports and is also public information on DeepSeek's recruitment platform. Interns from out of town receive an additional 3,000 RMB monthly housing allowance. Based on 22 working days, the monthly salary ranges from 11,000 to 22,000 RMB.
On a side note, DeepSeek's full-time deep learning researchers earn a monthly salary of 80,000 to 110,000 RMB, with 14 months of pay per year, for a maximum annual salary of 1.54 million RMB—there's an order of magnitude difference between interns and full-time staff.
Additionally, the previously circulated "DeepSeek intern from Tsinghua's Yao Class has a pre-tax daily salary of 5,500 RMB" is clearly an extreme outlier, one in a million. We'll put that aside for now and delve into it later.
ByteDance regular R&D/Algorithm intern, daily rate of 500 RMB. Starting January 1st of this year, ByteDance standardized the daily intern pay for all its tech and product roles at 500 RMB, a move framed as "increasing talent investment, improving salary competitiveness, and boosting option incentives" to "ensure our employee compensation and incentive returns are leading globally in every market."
Of course, following the convention of Chinese internet giants, this also includes three meals a day and a housing allowance, with some AI roles potentially reaching 550 RMB.
MiniMax, Multimodal/Algorithm intern, daily rate of 350 to over 600 RMB. Tech roles generally pay 350 to 500, with Master's-level SP offers reaching above 600; operations and non-tech roles, however, only get 150 to 200. MiniMax has a startup-specific incentive feature: nearly all 385 employees have equity, so while the cash salary might not be the highest, the total compensation package isn't necessarily worse.
Alibaba's Qwen AI R&D, daily rate of 350 to 550 RMB. Undergraduate roles pay 350 and Master's roles 400, plus a 2,000 RMB monthly housing allowance; AI Agent development roles can reach 450 to 600, and AI R&D engineers earn 500 to 550. There's also a week of free accommodation for those joining from other cities.
NVIDIA China, Deep Learning Architecture/CUDA intern, daily rate of 400 to 800 RMB. Standard testing roles on job boards, however, only pay 250 to 300 RMB.
Kimi (Moonshot AI), Search/Recommendation Algorithm & RL intern, daily rate of 400 to 450 RMB. Product operations intern roles pay 250 to 350 RMB per day. While Kimi has had a significant boost in confidence since the release of K3 and has seen success in external development and funding, its intern salaries aren't particularly high—though they do have a "Time-Travel Program" for top-tier talent from the class of 2027, which offers stock options directly. Furthermore, over 90% of its open positions offer monthly salaries above 30,000 RMB, with an average salary for Master's holders exceeding 44,000 RMB, so full-time employee packages are relatively decent.
Xiaomi regular LLM algorithm intern, daily rate of 300 to 400 RMB. This is the role mentioned earlier that pays less than half of the "top-tier internship," but in the current job market, it's already considered a pretty good deal.
Zhipu AI, LLM Algorithm Framework intern, daily rate of 200 to 300 RMB. This is the lowest cash salary tier in our research. But don't feel sorry for them just yet—Zhipu's employee shareholding ratio exceeds 51%, with 452 out of 883 employees holding equity. When the company was valued at 323.2 billion HKD, core骨干 could boast on-paper fortunes exceeding 100 million, and even regular employee shareholders held tens of millions. The cash is lower, but the options are the compensation—it all depends on whether the intern is willing to buy into the promise.
The Truth Behind DeepSeek's 5,500 RMB Daily Intern Rate: Don't Treat Geniuses Like Commodities
Here, we must specifically address the viral rumor about DeepSeek's 5,500 RMB/day intern salary.
The story originated from a tweet on X, where the poster claimed that "a student from Tsinghua's Yao Class showed off a DeepSeek offer with a pre-tax internship salary of 5,500 RMB." The news sent a shockwave through the entire AI community—based on 22 working days, that's a monthly salary of 120,000 RMB for an intern, and an annual salary exceeding 1.3 million RMB, placing them ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic on a global scale.
However, after cross-referencing publicly available online information and media reports, our conclusion is: "DeepSeek has not provided official confirmation; this appears to be an unverified, exceptional case circulating privately within the AI circle."
Therefore, we have not included this 5,500 RMB/day outlier in our ranking, mentioning it only as a side note. DeepSeek's officially published standard is 500 to 1,000 RMB per day, which is the reliable figure confirmed by multiple sources.
Yes, there's another point worth mentioning separately—DeepSeek, in order to prevent top-tier intern salaries from exceeding those of veteran employees, has implemented a "veteran employee scoring system"—where the salary for newcomers is determined by scores from existing employees. This also indirectly indicates that while high-salary exceptions do exist in the AI industry, they are certainly not the norm.
More Truths
After digging through the intern salary data of these dozen or so AI companies, several observations stand out.
First
