Tech Talent Drop - 2025 Review (#36)

AI kept its foot on the accelerator this week. Power, chips, and capital drove the headlines. If you are hiring into data, infra, or security, this is your signal to tighten job specs and get outreach in front of the right candidates before January chaos kicks in.

Listen to the final episode of 2025 here!

The Drop

Alphabet buys Intersect to lock in power for AI data centers
Google’s parent agreed to acquire Intersect in a 4.75 billion dollar deal. Read this as a long horizon bet on capacity. Expect hiring demand around energy procurement, data center operations, grid partnerships, and sustainability near new campus builds.

Nvidia signs a strategic license with Groq and hires key execs
Nvidia will license Groq’s inference tech and bring over senior leadership. Translation for teams: more focus on low latency inference, compiler and runtime talent, and datacenter deployment engineers.

AI funding cushion ends the year at record scale
Fresh reporting tallies 150 billion dollars raised by AI startups in 2025. The fortress balance sheet era is here, which means well funded teams will keep hiring through Q1 even if markets wobble.

AI Tool of the Week

Prelude
Scheduling automation for complex interviews. Panel building, calendar orchestration, load balancing, self-serve rescheduling, and solid ATS integrations. Use it to cut the back-and-forth and standardize interviewer load. Good alternative to GoodTime if you want a different flavor.

7 day pilot

1. Pick one role with 6 to 10 interviews per candidate.

2. Enable candidate self-scheduling for screens and panels.

3. Track time-to-schedule and no-show rate.

4. Compare against last role run manually.

Hiring and Interview Insight

Infra keeps hiring. Your specs should say why.
When power and chips are the story, the roles that move first are site reliability for inference, data engineering for security, and partnerships for energy capacity. Keep requirements specific. Tie responsibilities to latency targets, compliance regimes, and vendor ecosystems. The teams that ship those details in the JD get faster qualified responses.

Funding and Deals Watch

All items announced or reported in the last 7 days

• Alphabet x Intersect — acquisition to expand clean power and data center capacity. Hiring signal: energy, DC ops, sustainability, grid programs.

• Nvidia x Groq — technology license plus executive hires. Hiring signal: inference compilers, runtime, datacenter rollout.

• Dazzle AI — 8 million dollar seed round for Marissa Mayer’s new AI startup. Hiring signal: early product, applied research, GTM.

• 222 (consumer social) — 10.1 million dollar round focused on IRL connection. Not hiring for your infra team, but signals consumer AI social energy.

• I-care — 20 million euro raise and refinancing, now a unicorn in predictive maintenance. Hiring signal: industrial AI, edge sensing, reliability.

Why it matters: money and M&A clustered around power, inference, and enterprise workflow. Expect demand in platform reliability, integrations, and energy adjacent roles.

Quick Bytes

• Global data center investment set a record this year. Infra capacity is now a hiring constraint, not just a budget line.

• AI wealth and valuations continued to surge into the holidays, which usually correlates with January requisition approvals.

What to do this week

• Power check: for AI heavy roles, add one sentence in the JD about power and latency context. Candidates care.

• Inference readiness: if you are hiring compilers or runtime engineers, reference Groq or similar inference stacks directly in outreach.

• Scheduler pilot: trial Prelude for one complex loop and report time-to-schedule and no-show rate next Monday.

2025 Recap — the signals that actually moved hiring

• Capital went historic: AI startups set funding records, creating hiring insulation for top firms heading into 2026.

• Enterprise AI platforms hardened: AWS re:Invent shipped fresh managed AI services and reference patterns that teams can operationalize.

• Databricks’ late-stage round: more than 4 billion dollars at a 134 billion valuation and strong ARR momentum put data platforms at the center of AI staffing plans.

• Media x AI got real: Disney’s billion dollar partnership with OpenAI for Sora put licensed IP into generative workflows. Legal, trust, and creative tech roles followed.

• Energy is part of hiring now: the year closed with a marquee clean-power acquisition to feed AI data centers. Expect more power-adjacent roles in 2026.

Wrap this year by tightening specs, piloting one scheduling automation, and shortlisting energy and inference talent pools. January gets noisy. Show up early with clarity. 

That’s all for this week’s Tech Talent Drop — stay informed, and see you next week!