What actually motivates AI talent to work for companies

Mark Zuckerberg hand-delivered homemade soup to OpenAI researchers’ front doors in an attempt to recruit them. Elon Musk pledged to personally read every SpaceX AI application—no résumé required; pedigree optional. When the world’s richest founders are cold-calling engineers with soup and big-figure job offers, it’s clear the AI talent war has reached a new, absurd level. But Meta and SpaceX aren’t the only ones taking outlandish measures to attract talent in the tightest hiring market in tec...