AI startups push 72-hour weeks, reviving China’s ‘996’ culture to stay ahead

Magnus Muller, the 24-year-old CEO of the AI startup Browser Use, works 7 days a week from the clip helium rises (reportedly astir 7 a.m.) to erstwhile helium goes to furniture — usually astir 1 a.m.

Kinjal Nandy, CEO of AI startup Sonatic, precocious posted a occupation that asks the prospective worker to enactment 7 days a week, portion AI startup Cognition’s CEO Scott Wu told the Washington Post astir an “extreme show culture” that includes moving nights and weekends. (1)

In occupation listings and X postings, “996” is the PIN fig for businesses seeking hyper-dedicated employees.

So wherefore are these California-based CEOs moving truthful hard? In part, it’s a throwback to the “grind culture” of the precocious 1990s and aboriginal 2000s during the archetypal dot-com boom, erstwhile agelong hours and “sleeping nether your desk” were seen arsenic impervious of startup devotion.

The different reason, arsenic Caroline Winnett, the enforcement manager of Berkeley SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s tech accelerator programme told the Washington Post (2), is that the companies gathering AI present volition seizure the market, and the model of accidental is lone 2 oregon 3 years.

This reasoning motivates young founders to contention arsenic hard arsenic they tin to physique their businesses — and they are successful a dormant vigor with their Chinese competitors.

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In the past 10 years, Elon Musk and his companies person go paragons of grind culture, with Musk openly arguing 80- to 100-hour workweeks are indispensable to success.

The word 996 archetypal gained traction successful the U.S. aft Alibaba laminitis Jack Ma said (3) successful a 2019 interrogation that young radical should spot moving 12 hours a day, six days a week arsenic a “blessing” — comments that helium had to locomotion backmost aft online backlash.

Many of the founders who espouse the 996 ethos are successful their 20s, erstwhile they don’t person different obligations to get successful the mode of their quest to beryllium first-to-market with world-disrupting technology.

To the elite fewer who unrecorded successful San Francisco and enactment for an AI startup, a 72-hour enactment week whitethorn dependable similar the lone way to a aboriginal of untold riches.

But for astir workers, including older workers and younger workers who aren’t each astir the money, 996 sounds similar a situation alternatively than a cardinal to success.