Earlier quoted context omitted.
VC looking for an aquihire payout. I haven’t looked, but perhaps some of the team is ex-FAANG and the VC is counting on a purchase price > $5mil.
Do aquihires go for that kind of money? I expect these to be much much lower.
Depends on who, I've seen an aquihire for around 7 engs with pedigree go for around 30 million. Now that company had taken on around 20m in VC and had developed a product... but that product was immediately thrown away by the acquiring company and the devs assigned to existing work.