If you want to see a person's eyes light up at a Silicon Valley party, just say the words "pre-IPO equity." It works.
Google's sudden AI talent losses may have less to do with dissatisfaction and more to do with a timeless Silicon Valley calculation: where the biggest equity upside lives.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that two key Gemini researchers, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, are leaving Google for Anthropic, adding to a growing list of high-profile departures from the search giant. The moves follow recent exits by AI luminaries, including Noam Shazeer and Nobel Prize winner John Jumper.
It's tempting to frame these departures as a verdict on Google's AI strategy. That could be part of it — Google has many priorities, while Anthropic and OpenAI are razor-focused on the AI frontier. That's attractive to AI talent.
A simpler explanation may be financial, though.
For elite Silicon Valley talent, moving from a mature public company to a fast-growing startup has long been one of the most reliable paths to outsized wealth creation — especially if the startup is an IPO candidate.
At Google, compensation is mostly tied to RSUs at a company that already commands a market capitalization of over $4 trillion. The upside is substantial but relatively predictable.
At Anthropic or OpenAI, the equation could be very different. Researchers who join now can receive meaningful chunks of pre-IPO equity. If those companies eventually go public — perhaps in late 2026 or 2027 — those grants could appreciate dramatically once lockup periods expire.
Shazeer offers a case study of how lucrative it can be to jump around amid an AI boom.
He left Google in 2021 to cofound Character.AI. About three years later, Google paid roughly $2.7 billion through a licensing deal that brought him back. Because Shazeer owned a sizable stake in the startup, he made hundreds of millions of dollars by selling his stake as part of the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
About 20 months later, he's on the move again. This time he joined OpenAI, which recently filed confidentially for an IPO. Assuming he got fresh equity as part of the switch, Shazeer has once again positioned himself for another highly lucrative liquidity event.
Top AI researchers will likely tell you the talent war is about building the future. But it's also about owning a larger piece of it.
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Alistair Barr is the author of Business Insider's Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was BI's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2007 for coverage of short selling and was a finalist in 2013 for scoops on the Facebook IPO. More recently, he won a 2024 San Francisco Press Club award for commentary. Got a tip? Reach out using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 415-341-4927) or via email on [email protected].ExpertiseAlistair oversees all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including generative AI, large language models, cloud computing, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.Popular StoriesArtificial Intelligence:It's getting harder to make big leaps at the frontier of AIOpenAI's AI-adjusted earnings numbers have echoes of Groupon and WeWorkDeath by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI worldCloud computing:Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.In cloud, there's AI (which is hot) and everything else (which is not)Chips:Why Intel is still so important: Real countries have fabsApple's made-in-the-USA chips signal a turnaround for the US's big semiconductor betEVs and Tesla:Tesla's AI supercomputer has a Silicon Valley town rushing to meet surging electricity demandTesla's Cybertruck is outselling almost every other EV in the USOnline Search:Google is losing its status as a verbA simple way to fix search: Bright pink ads
