The writer is former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and writes Futurepolis, a newsletter on the future of democracy

Even by Silicon Valley’s historically rarefied standards, Big AI is spending stratospheric amounts on talent this year. Meta has invested $15bn in Scale AI, a data labelling start-up that claims just 900 employees. Scale’s 28-year-old chief executive, Alexandr Wang, will take up a job at a new Meta lab devoted to creating AI “superintelligence”. His cash and equity in the deal is reported to be worth some $5bn, making him one of the most expensive so-called “acqui-hires” on record.

Meta is also reportedly offering $100mn sign-on bonuses to lure researchers from other artificial intelligence companies to its lab. OpenAI, meanwhile, has paid $6.4bn for io, the boutique design firm led by Apple’s former top designer Jony Ive. And bidding wars from rivals keen to hire its top researchers have led it to pay up to $2mn in retention bonuses to employees whose existing packages already reach eight figures.