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Hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

the AI talent wars challenge the shared trust and mission that aligned founders, employees, and investors

Key people have driven billions of dollars in value – look at Jony Ive’s contribution to the iPhone, or Jeff Dean’s implementation of distributed systems at Google, or Andy Jassy’s incubation of AWS. I’m not an employment lawyer, and non-competes get tricky in California, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see heavier measures to approximate exclusive contracts, like deferred compensation or equity clawback agreements for defection to a named list of competitors. On the big tech side, the talent wars thin the playing field to companies with 1) tens of billions in net income that they can cut into, and 2) leaders with founder-like agency that will heavily sacrifice earnings for a seat at the AI table.

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