Overview

• Meta agreed a $200 million multi-year package for Ruoming Pang while Google paid $2.4 billion to onboard Varun Mohan’s Windsurf research team this month
• Early-stage companies are boosting base salaries to $300,000–$400,000, granting 2–5 percent equity stakes and cofounder titles, and promising flexible research time to lure top AI talent
• Microsoft committed $80 billion this year to expand AI training data centers, and Google has earmarked roughly $100 billion for new cloud infrastructure and model-training capacity
• A SignalFire report shows graduate hiring in tech has plunged 50 percent since before the pandemic, fueling what investors call a “crazy AI talent bubble” that favors veteran engineers
• Mark Cuban warns firms will increasingly lock down crucial AI innovations and expertise to protect their competitive edge