While global tech companies continue to spend massive sums to attract top artificial intelligence talent, Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian believes true innovation does not come from the highest paychecks. Instead, he says it comes from having the right people who align with a company’s long-term vision.
Tech giants like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic are offering multi-million dollar packages, with some exceeding $200 million, to recruit top AI researchers. Meta recently made headlines by hiring Apple’s Foundation Models head Ruoming Pang with a reported offer of over $200 million. In some cases, companies have offered signing bonuses of up to $100 million.
However, Wang says this approach may not lead to real breakthroughs. “The only thing you need to do is get the right person, not necessarily an expensive person. Because if this is true innovation, that basically means the talent nobody cares about is available for you,” he said.
Wang, who launched Alibaba Cloud in 2009, helped grow it into one of the largest cloud and AI platforms in the world. Reflecting on his early vision to recruit talent from Silicon Valley, he shared that the biggest challenge was cost. “After talking to people, I realised we didn’t have much attraction there because the talent was too expensive,” he said.
He also pointed out that companies today are often too focused on hiring already-successful talent, which can take attention away from finding individuals who have the potential to drive new ideas. “What’s happening today, with companies, is that they are very much focused on the existing success of the business and existing technology. We have a tremendous opportunity to look at technology nobody knows today. These talents are available for you. So that’s really about vision and where you want to go.”
He believes the most valuable people for building new businesses are often overlooked. “It’s not that they’re cheap. It’s about the vision and where you want to go, and if the talent is available and aligned with your vision,” he added. “Whenever everybody knows that these are the talents, it’s better for you not to get them. What’s happening in Silicon Valley is not the winning formula.”
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