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![rwang07 Avatar](https://lunarcrush.com/gi/w:24/cr:twitter::833295407182516224.png) Ray Wang [@rwang07](/creator/twitter/rwang07) on x 14.1K followers
Created: 2025-06-23 02:49:38 UTC

Amazing essay by Partner at Sequoia Capital David Cahn: 

"Now, by contrast, a new cohort of players has sprouted up, including  SSI, Thinking Machines, and DeepSeek, who claim talent, not raw compute  scale, as their primary differentiators.

Whereas one year ago the narrative was around pre-training compute  requirements driving consolidation, today the narrative is all about  talent advantages being critical in a world of increasing compute  abundance.

With their obsessive focus on talent, the AI labs are increasingly  looking like sports teams: They are each backed by a mega-rich tech  company or individual. Star players can command pay packages in the tens  of millions, hundreds of millions, or for the most outlier talent,  seemingly even billions of dollars."

/1

![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GuGINQqWIAA-sWr.png)

XXXXX engagements

![Engagements Line Chart](https://lunarcrush.com/gi/w:600/p:tweet::1936979933290467530/c:line.svg)

**Related Topics**
[sequoia capital](/topic/sequoia-capital)

[Post Link](https://x.com/rwang07/status/1936979933290467530)