👋 Hey — Egemen here.
AI engineer equity grants at seed are up 64% in two years.
If your cap table math is from 2024, you've got a problem.
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🧠 Deep-Dive: Startup Salaries
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🧠 Deep-Dive: Startup Salaries
Carta dropped their H2 2025 comp report this week. Two numbers stuck with me: salaries up 5.1% in two years, equity up 13%. Most founders I talk to know cash comp moved. Almost none have updated their equity assumptions to match.
If you're raising a seed in the next six months and you're working with 2024 cap table math, you're going to lose your first AI hire.
At startups valued between $1M and $10M, the median initial equity grant for AI/ML engineers is up 64% over the past two years. Not 6%. Sixty-four. The bar moved and a lot of us missed it.
Most of this comes back to team size. The median seed team is four people. Series B average headcount went from 53 in 2023 to 45 in 2025.
So basically fewer hires per company, bigger budget per hire. AI talent is usually the rate-limiter on your roadmap right now, so they get whatever the market is asking.
Hiring itself isn't dead either. Carta companies posted 5,652 net new hires in January 2026, roughly the 2025 average.
Hiring is happening selectively, and physical-economy companies are doing more of it than pure software shops.
What I'd do this week: rebuild your seed cap table assumptions on H2 2025 numbers. Assume your first AI engineer wants 60% more equity than you're modeling.
So either raise a bigger round, or skip the AI/ML specialist hire and let your roadmap move slower. Both are fine. Showing up to an offer with 2024 numbers is not.
👉 If your seed cap table still uses 2024 assumptions, your next AI offer is going to bounce. Rebuild it now, before the candidate is on a call.
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☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Ineffable
Ineffable Intelligence has secured a record-breaking $1.1 billion in seed funding at a $5.1 billion valuation - yeah, not a typo, what?!
Ineffable Intelligence is a London-based AI research lab founded by AlphaGo architect David Silver, focused on developing the next generation of reinforcement learning models.
The company aims to push the boundaries of general-purpose AI, with its founder notably pledging to donate 100% of his future equity gains to high-impact charities.