They say you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So I’m trying to poach AI engineers who just got $100 million signing bonuses at Meta. I think it’s going really well.
But jokes aside, this is actually happening. The AI talent war is unlike anything I’ve seen in 15 years of building companies. Big Tech isn’t just competing for good engineers anymore. They’re offering packages that make startup equity look like a rounding error.
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What’s Actually Going On
Meta, Google, and OpenAI are paying AI researchers $1M+ in annual compensation. Some top ML engineers are pulling $5-10M when you factor in RSUs and retention bonuses. These aren’t rumors. These are real numbers circulating in the founder community.
And yet, somehow, some of the best AI engineers in the world are still choosing startups. Why?
Because money isn’t the whole story. It never is.
What Startups Actually Have
The engineers joining early-stage AI companies aren’t leaving Meta money on the table because they’re bad at math. They’re making a different calculation.
At a big tech company, you’re one of 10,000 engineers. Your work ships into a product used by billions, sure, but your fingerprint on it is almost invisible. The decisions get made three layers above you. The interesting problems get solved by a committee.
At a startup, you own the problem. You make the calls. You see the impact in real time.
That’s not a consolation prize. For the right person, it’s worth more than the bonus.
What This Means for Founders
If you’re building an AI company right now, you can’t win on salary. You won’t. So stop trying.
What you can win on:
- Ownership. Real equity at a real valuation, not 0.1% at a company already worth $50B.
- Mission clarity. Engineers want to know exactly what they’re building and why it matters.
- Speed. At a startup, you can go from idea to shipped in a week. That’s addictive for people who build.
- Access. Working directly with the founders, making decisions that actually stick.
The engineers you want are already thinking about this trade-off. Your job is to make the case clearly and honestly.
The Honest Truth
Most founders pitch the dream without acknowledging the risk. That’s a mistake. The best AI engineers are sophisticated. They know the failure rates. They know the dilution math. They’ve seen the cap tables.
Be straight with them. Here’s the risk. Here’s the upside. Here’s why we think this works. Here’s what you’ll own and what you’ll build.
That conversation wins more often than you’d think. Especially when the alternative is getting lost inside a $1 trillion company.
The bottom line? You probably can’t poach someone who just got a $100M signing bonus. But you don’t need to. You need the person who turned it down. Those people exist. Go find them.