- The AI talent war among major tech companies is intensifying, with firms like offering lavish $100 million signing bonuses to attract top researchers from competitors such as OpenAI. However, HelloSky has emerged to broaden the recruitment pool, utilizing AI-driven data to map candidates’ real-world impact and uncover hidden talent outside of traditional Silicon Valley networks.
As AI becomes more widespread, the need for top-tier talent at tech firms grows even more critical—and it’s heating up among Big Tech, which is simultaneously undergoing layoffs and poaching employees from one another with eye-catching pay packages. Meta, , is offering $100 million signing bonuses to attract top OpenAI researchers. Others are rushing to retain staff with large bonuses and noncompete agreements.
Given the seemingly small pool of researchers with the expertise to drive new waves of AI advancements, it’s no surprise that salaries have soared. This is why one tech executive stated that companies will need to stop “recycling” candidates from the talent pools to foster innovation.
“There are various biases and filters regarding people’s backgrounds or where they are from. However, if you could truly map all of that and simply give credit to individuals who may have taken alternative paths, [then you can] truly rank them,” , founder and CEO of AI executive recruiting platform , told .
(In April 2025, HelloSky announced the closure of a from investors including Caldwell Partners, Karmel Capital, True, Hunt Scanlon Ventures, as well as prominent angel investors from and Cisco Systems).
This is why Bates developed HelloSky, which combines candidate, company, talent, investor, and assessment data into a single GenAI-powered platform to assist companies in finding candidates they might not have discovered otherwise.
Many tech companies draw from past job descriptions and resume submissions to poach top talent, explained Bates, who also authored on the relationship between humans and AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is even reportedly keeping a of all the top talent he aims to poach for his Superintelligence Labs and has been deeply involved in his company’s recruiting strategies.
However, the AI talent wars will make it harder than ever to fill positions with experienced candidates.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed concern about the pool they have to draw from.
“The bet, the hope, is that they know how to uncover the remaining ideas to achieve superintelligence—that there will be a small number of algorithmic ideas and, you know, a moderate number of people who can solve them,” Altman told CNBC.
The ‘moneyball’ for finding top talent
Bates refers to his platform as “moneyball” for finding top talent—essentially a “complete map” of real domain experts who may not be well-connected in Silicon Valley.
Using AI, HelloSky can tag various candidates, map connections, and identify individuals who may not have as strong a social media or job board presence but possess the necessary experience to thrive in high-level roles.
The platform examines not only resumes but also actual code contributions, peer-reviewed research, and even trending open-source projects, prioritizing measurable impact over impressive degrees. This enables companies to find candidates who have shown significant results in small, resourceful teams or other niche communities, similar to how the Oakland A’s Billy Beane collaborated with Ivy League graduate Peter Brand to revolutionize traditional baseball scouting, as depicted in the book and movie Moneyball.
It’s a “major breakthrough for everything from hiring, partnering, acquiring—whatever, really—for everyone interested in this space,” Bates said. “There’s a significant amount of hidden talent worldwide.”
HelloSky can also detect when certain candidates “embellish” their experience on job platforms or fill in gaps for individuals with limited online presence.
“Perhaps they claimed to have been part of a billion-dollar IPO, but [in reality] they left two years before the IPO. We can highlight that,” Bates said. “But we can also give credit to people who may not have promoted themselves enough.” This aids companies in finding their “diamond in the rough,” he added.
Bates also predicts that search firms and internal recruiters will start increasingly requiring assessments from candidates to ensure they are the right fit for the job.
“If you can target effectively and avoid wasting time talking to the wrong people, then you can delve much deeper into these next-generation behavioral assessment frameworks,” he said. “I believe that will be the trend of the future.”
A version of this story was published on on August 17, 2025.
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