In a tech world obsessed with eye-popping salaries and fierce talent battles, Alibaba Cloud founder Wang Jian has taken a stand that challenges the status quo. While Silicon Valley’s giants like Meta, Google, and Microsoft race to hire top AI minds with compensation packages soaring past $200 million, Wang insists that true innovation doesn’t come from the size of a paycheck, but from the alignment of vision.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Wang expressed concern over the current hiring trends, saying, “The only thing you need to do is get the right person, not necessarily an expensive person. Because if this is true innovation, that basically means the talent nobody cares about is available for you.”

His remarks come at a time when Silicon Valley’s biggest players are heavily investing in high-profile engineers and researchers. Companies are offering multi-million-dollar incentives, including jaw-dropping signing bonuses, to attract the brightest in AI. One of the latest examples includes Meta reportedly offering over $200 million to Apple’s Foundation Models head, Ruoming Pang.

But for Wang Jian, who played a pivotal role in launching Alibaba Cloud in 2009 and building it into one of the world’s leading cloud and AI ecosystems, the focus should lie elsewhere. Recalling his own experience while scouting talent in Silicon Valley during Alibaba Cloud’s formative years, Wang admitted that his team found it difficult to attract skilled professionals, largely because they were too expensive.

“After talking to people, (he) realised we didn’t have much attraction there because the talent was too expensive,” Wang said, reflecting on his early recruitment challenges.

Instead of engaging in bidding wars, Wang believes that true innovation thrives among those who are still under the radar—individuals who may not yet be recognized as stars but possess the right mindset and vision.

“What’s happening today, with companies, is that they are very much focused on the existing success of the business and existing technology. We have a tremendous opportunity to look at technology nobody knows today. These talents are available for you. So that’s really about vision and where you want to go,” he explained.

Wang emphasized that in the early days of a startup or a tech revolution, the most valuable contributors are often not the most visible ones. “It’s not that they’re cheap. It’s about the vision and where you want to go, and if the talent is available and aligned with your vision,” he added.

He also offered a word of caution to those putting all their chips on big-name hires: “Whenever everybody knows that these are the talents, it’s better for you not to get them. What’s happening in Silicon Valley is not the winning formula.”

In a landscape dominated by high-stakes recruitment and inflated compensation, Wang Jian's perspective offers a timely reminder: meaningful innovation is less about chasing headlines and more about building purpose-driven teams that believe in a common goal.