Скачать или смотреть A Betrayal in Silicon Valley: Why High Pay Can Create a Traitor?

Why High Pay Can Create a Traitor?Traitors never go far.

A Stanford Ph.D. cashed out $7 million and defected with core code, only to become one of the most foolish defendants in Silicon Valley history. It sounds unbelievable, but a top Chinese engineer who sat next to Elon Musk during the Grok 4 launch chose to be a "tech thief" instead of staying on a clear path to success. Now he faces a massive lawsuit and has put his reputation on the line.
To put it simply, an AI codebase is like a restaurant's secret recipe. Musk's xAI spent two years perfecting Grok. Li Xuechen didn't just steal the code; he took the "secret sauce" that came from countless late nights of debugging, including the real-time search algorithm and the multi-tool calling logic. These are what gave Grok the confidence to challenge ChatGPT. Without these core technologies, even the best chef couldn't recreate that taste.
What's even more disruptive is the frenzy in the AI talent market. Meta offered a 24-year-old researcher a four-year, $250 million contract with a $100 million signing bonus—more than Messi’s annual salary. Capital is treating talent like star athletes, but no one seems to be asking: when technology has a clear price tag, how low will people's ethical standards fall? Let's discuss how this wild talent war created a "tech traitor" and how one person's foolishness could destroy opportunities for an entire group.

Tech Heist in a Capital-Fueled Feeding Frenzy
Meta's HR department might be busier than the FBI. This year alone, they've poached 45 researchers from OpenAI, giving 24-year-old Matt Deitke a staggering four-year, $250 million contract, with $100 million in cash in the first year. Google is even more ruthless. To close the gap between Gemini and GPT, they brought in Meta veteran Bill Jia as their "AI enforcer." He started by firing ten underperforming directors and then spent a year recruiting over a dozen L9-level tech experts. These tech giants are playing a real-life "Football Manager," but the players are engineers with algorithms, and the transfer fees are so massive they make your head spin.
But Li Xuechen clearly played the game wrong. He secretly sold his $7 million in xAI stock in June, then in July, he copied the core code, deleting logs and compressing files, thinking he could get away with it. This kind of behavior just won't work in Silicon Valley. While Meta throws money at talent, it has a clear rule: "don't bring data from your old employer." Zuckerberg knows where the red line is. Li Xuechen, however, wanted both the high salary from a new company and to bring a "gift" with him, turning a business game into a crime scene. That's not smart; it's a bubble of pure stupidity.
When the annual salary for top AI talent in Silicon Valley exceeds $40 million, surpassing even top-tier NBA players, this battle for elite talent has long strayed from the path of innovation. Capital has turned tech professionals into tradable financial assets, using stock options to create "talent leverage." This ignores the fact that disruptive innovation is an ecosystem built on long-term trust and collaboration. While giants like Meta and Google have conducted headhunting blitzes, they have at least followed the industry's unspoken rule of "taking the talent, not the code." This unspoken rule is both a respect for intellectual property and a social contract that maintains the industry's trust.
In contrast, Li Xuechen’s team defection with the core codebase has sent a shockwave through the industry's trust system. This "armed transfer" that crossed ethical boundaries may have given his new company a short-term technical edge, but it has triggered a chain reaction of trust crises. Tech companies are now tightening non-compete agreements to their legal limits, restricting the mobility of tech professionals. The open-source community is beginning to question code-sharing, with many engineers choosing to keep innovations behind corporate firewalls. As the cost of trust rises exponentially, all tech professionals will be bound by stricter non-compete clauses, creating a vicious cycle that systematically stifles innovation.