Google Losing AI Talent to OpenAI and Anthropic Despite High Pay

Google is losing employees to AI startups despite offering compensation packages that reach into the high six figures, according to interviews with current and former workers conducted by Business Insider.

Yousuf Imran earned $986,000 in 2026 as a Google account executive, combining a roughly $170,000 base salary with substantial sales commissions. Yet he left in April to launch his own AI sales tools startup, drawn by what he called the "life-changing money" available in the AI sector.

"Google pays very well, but the equity packages at OpenAI and Anthropic are in a different universe," said Imran, 41, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Business Insider spoke with 12 current and former Google employees, including six who recently departed. Their accounts reveal that while Google's reputation as a premier employer remains intact, the AI boom has created competing opportunities that some workers find impossible to ignore. The company has lost several prominent AI researchers to OpenAI and Anthropic in recent weeks.

Layoffs eroded the stability premium

Job security concerns are reshaping how employees view Google's long-term value proposition. Between its 1998 founding and 2022, the company rarely conducted large-scale layoffs. That changed in 2023 when Google eliminated approximately 12,000 positions — roughly 6% of its workforce. Subsequent rounds of smaller cuts and voluntary buyouts followed as the company redirected resources toward AI development.

Joslyn Orgill started as a data engineer at Google about six months before the 2023 layoffs. Though she kept her position, she cited the cuts as a factor in her decision to leave last year to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science.

Taylor M. LaSane accepted a buyout offer last year. She had already been considering focusing full-time on the career coaching business she started three years earlier, but said the repeated layoffs made leaving feel less risky than it once would have.

Google's standing among prospective employees has also shifted. The company held the top spot as the most attractive employer for business students for over a decade, according to employer-branding firm Universum. It fell to second behind Apple in 2022. In the firm's most recent U.S. survey, Google dropped from first among business students in 2023 to fifth, though it remained the top choice for IT students.

Scale cuts both ways

Some departing employees said Google's massive scale — once a key attraction — made it harder to see their individual impact. Aashna Doshi left in May to build an AI startup, motivated by the desire to make faster decisions and observe direct results from her work.

"At a Big Tech company, you're one piece of a very large machine," Doshi said. "The scarier version of this decision wasn't leaving Google. It was staying and always wondering what could have been."

Employees also noted incremental changes to workplace perks and policies. The company reduced hours for certain office cafés in 2023 as part of cost-cutting measures. Some workers reported tighter budgets for travel, team events, and holiday celebrations, alongside more restrictive work-from-home policies.

Pre-IPO equity as a magnet

As OpenAI and Anthropic move toward potential public offerings, pre-IPO equity has become a powerful recruitment tool. Career coach Sundeep Teki told Business Insider that nearly every AI job seeker he advises wants to work at one of these two companies.

A Google spokesperson told Business Insider the company remains confident in its ability to attract and retain talent. Google's six-figure salaries and stock grants continue to exceed most corporate compensation standards.

For Imran, however, the calculation was clear: "If the only way to get real upside in this AI moment is equity, at some point, you ask yourself whether the equity should be in your own company."

Why it matters

Google's talent retention challenges illustrate how the AI boom is redistributing human capital across the technology sector. When employees earning close to $1 million annually choose to leave for startups or to build their own companies, it signals that compensation alone cannot retain top performers in a market defined by rapid change and the potential for transformational equity gains. The shift also suggests that perceived job security — once a cornerstone of Big Tech employment — has diminished as a competitive advantage following industry-wide layoffs.

Details in this report were first published by Business Insider.