Reportedly, Ilya Sutskever was offered upward of $2 million/year to remain at Google as he departed for OpenAI. By many accounts, he's not alone at earning over

Reportedly, Ilya Sutskever was offered upward of $2 million/year to remain at Google as he departed for OpenAI. By many accounts, he's not alone at earning over $1 million/year as an independent contributor. When Hinton, Krishevsky, and Sutskever sold DNNresearch (incorporated only days before) to Google, their $44 million crossed that line too, since the company had no products or IP that was independent of UToronto, AFAIK. The three were effectively "hired" as indep contributors.