An embodied AI unicorn is recruiting a CFO with an annual salary of 30 million yuan.

"The competition for talent among embodied intelligence companies has reached an 'unreasonable' level."

The headhunter Henry told me that Meituan and AutoNavi are in a talent scramble. The annual salary offered is comparable to that of an Alibaba P10, reaching up to 5 million yuan. Industry unicorns are also vying for talent. Some bosses are even willing to offer an annual salary of over 30 million yuan just to recruit a CFO who can handle accounts and calculate finances.

It's definitely not an overstatement to say that embodied intelligence might be one of the sectors most willing to invest in recruitment budgets. There have been many reports of high - salary poaching. However, it still surprised the industry that companies far from profitability are offering multi - million - yuan annual salaries to find a CFO. At first, I wanted to say that they don't value investors' money. But after careful consideration, I realized that these companies actually understand and value money the most.

The All - Rounder

When it comes to CFOs, they are usually regarded as "tools" for listing. Most companies only think of hiring a CFO when they are on the verge of going public. China Venture Capital & Private Equity has also mentioned in the article "CFOs Know They Are Tools" that "the biggest function of a CFO is to promote the company's listing, and these people often set a deadline for themselves to complete this task and then move on to the next IPO."

However, under the wave of technology, this inertia is being broken. External financing, capital operation, and IPO experience are just the basic capabilities of a CFO. In addition, a CFO also needs to understand the business, the strategy, and balance the relationships among various parties. China Venture Capital & Private Equity wrote in the article "The Founder of an Embodied Intelligence Company Interviewed Me" that the financing channels for enterprises have expanded. However, in the field of embodied intelligence, the pattern is becoming more and more solidified. Therefore, more and more companies are looking for profits internally and efficiency from operations.

Ren Zhengfei pointed out this problem early on. "Why can't our projects make profits? In fact, our project CEOs haven't calculated the accounts properly. The current management is not effective enough. Project CEOs don't understand finance, and project CFOs don't understand the business."

Therefore, the CFOs that embodied intelligence companies are looking for now fit the standard portrait of an "all - rounder." It makes sense. A good CFO has never been just a bookkeeper. There are six subjects in the Certified Public Accountant exam.

Let's talk about financing. The policy attitude towards the listing of the embodied intelligence industry is not clear. At the same time, many leading enterprises are continuously breaking financing records, and capital is becoming more concentrated. Therefore, it is becoming more difficult to find suitable funds.

Zhang Yu, the founding partner of Qingzhi Capital, previously told China Venture Capital & Private Equity that "the financing environment in the industry may become more difficult in the next two or three years." He then encouraged the invested companies to raise more funds to make sufficient preparations for the large - scale implementation of applications. He also set a short - term goal for the invested companies: to find a business breakthrough in the next two years, establish a foothold in the corresponding field, get orders, and generate profits.

The data is also very straightforward. According to the investment and financing data of the embodied intelligence sector last year compiled by Touzhong Jiachuan, the trend of capital concentration is becoming more and more obvious. The top 10 companies accounted for about 40% of the annual financing amount. The industry pattern may accelerate its stratification in 2026.

To put it simply, the embodied intelligence industry is still far from self - sufficiency in financing. The financing ability will become the most direct factor determining a company's survival, and the CFO will naturally become the key figure. Moreover, from a business perspective, apart from raising funds, 2026 is regarded by enterprises and the market as the year of large - scale implementation of embodied intelligence. Another fact is that these market players have a natural tendency to burn money. There is nothing light - asset about hardware, R & D, delivery, and operation and maintenance.

Therefore, the real situation of many embodied intelligence companies is that they need to expand scenarios, increase revenue, keep financing, and always keep an eye on the window period of the capital market. High - salary poaching is not "being rich and capricious," but is driven by multiple factors such as project implementation, commercialization, overseas expansion, and seizing the listing window. This has led to a strange phenomenon: the industry is full of announcements of financing. Although they do have more money, they are also more anxious.

Don't Let That CFO Get Away

Of course, only a very small number of companies have the ability and willingness to offer an annual salary of 30 million yuan. Front - line recruiters told me that such a budget is only reasonable when a company's annual revenue exceeds one billion yuan or it has billions of yuan in cash reserves. Therefore, when embodied intelligence companies offer multi - million - yuan annual salaries to recruit CFOs, it is not an emotional decision, but more of a defense against uncertainty. Moreover, it is possible that they are recruiting a reserve CEO.

Supply and demand determine price. The premium on CFO salaries is due to the scarcity of suitable candidates. Different from ordinary recruitment, this kind of high - level recruitment often takes half a year or even a year. Andrew, the headhunter looking for a CFO for this company, has a rich resource pool. However, the progress of this recruitment case has been very slow in the past six months.

In fact, it's not easy to find candidates with an annual salary of over 5 million yuan. How difficult is it? Headhunters usually compare the success rate of such high - budget recruitment with winning the lottery. After all, the higher the annual salary, the higher the decision - making cost. Coupled with the binding of options and stocks, facing the uncertainty of the current cycle, and the most mysterious factor - the "chemistry" with the founder.

From the company's perspective, high - level recruitment is a typical non - standard demand. It is normal for each case to be different. Even when recruiting CFOs, different companies have different requirements. The core requirement for headhunters is to understand both the company and the candidate well. They need to judge the company's development stage, strategic pain points, and accurately match the candidate's abilities and demands.

More importantly, the final decision - maker in recruitment is always the founder. A commonly mentioned fact is that most founders cannot clearly describe what kind of high - level executives they need. They know that "something is wrong" with the company, but it is difficult for them to break down the problem precisely into job requirements and ability models.

Based on this, high - level recruitment is becoming more and more like a consulting service. The establishment of trust and the verification of abilities naturally extend the recruitment cycle.

In embodied intelligence companies, this kind of hesitation is not uncommon. Most founders have a strong technical background and have absolute control over algorithms, systems, and hardware architectures. However, they lack a sense of security in commercialization, finance, and organizational management. Recruiting a CFO is essentially looking for a "complementary person." And complementing means trust.

This also explains why high - level recruitment is a business that combines ability and luck. A multi - million - yuan recruitment deal tests not only a headhunter's connections and judgment but also a bit of coincidence. After all, the "right person" that the founder can recognize at first sight is hard to come by.

Of course, there are exceptions. Last year, a headhunter friend Doris set a record by finalizing a partner in less than a month. However, the service fee of over 500,000 yuan could only be received after the candidate had been employed for three months.

A New Gold - Mining Ground for Headhunters

The explosion of recruitment demand in popular sectors has made headhunters collectively turn their attention to startups.

More than one headhunter mentioned to me in the communication that they will shift their business focus to startups this year. Especially those who used to focus on the VC/PE field, and secondly, headhunters who rely on Internet companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent.

Headhunters on the front line have long been aware of the downturn in the VC/PE market. Last year, they still had illusions about this market. Henry complained to me, "Seeing the booming IPO wave in the market, I thought that at least the institutions would have more money, but when it comes to recruitment, not only are they continuously reducing staff, some institutions are only laying off and not hiring, and some have even cut the budget for headhunter services."

He also mentioned that there were several cases of candidates backing out last year. Especially when US - dollar funds started to recover, RMB funds became significantly less popular in the recruitment market.

In contrast, he received one or two requests to recruit company CEOs last year. Although the budgets were not as shocking as the multi - million - yuan annual salary at the beginning, they were all between 3 million and 5 million yuan. It was relatively easier to find such candidates in the market.

Comparing the two situations, the answer to the choice is obvious. Henry admitted, "At least these companies really have recruitment needs and budgets."

Another headhunter, Max, has a similar experience to Henry. He started helping investors transition to Internet giants a few years ago. Last year, this kind of demand was coming to an end. What emerged instead was the demand from startups. This demand includes not only high - level positions but also ordinary employees.

He told me that in the case of embodied intelligence, it is not uncommon for many companies to double or even triple their staff within a year. Especially companies at the Series A or B stage, which are in the team expansion phase. Sometimes they recruit dozens of people at once, and there are unified evaluation criteria, which are suitable for batch operations. In the headhunter market, this kind of project has a relatively high cost - performance ratio.

Although multi - million - yuan budgets are rare and hard to fulfill, even if they only handle this kind of batch recruitment demand, the income is more substantial than just focusing on the investment and financial markets.

However, since the demand from startups is very obvious, there are also many people eyeing this piece of cake. Max's recent experience is quite representative. This time, he was helping a startup recruit middle - and high - level managers. Since the candidates he recommended were not in China, the communication was a bit delayed. But just two weeks later, the company informed him that they had found a suitable candidate.

Of course, an interesting thing in this communication is that many headhunters mentioned the news of Yao Shunyu joining Tencent and the sale of Manus. The tone and emotional color in their discussions clearly showed that they were inspired and full of eager expectations for the coming year. You see, the existence of some people and companies is influencing the mood of the entire industry in ways and to an extent that we can't imagine.

(All names in this article are aliases)

This article is from the WeChat official account "China Venture Capital & Private Equity", author: Zhang Xue. Republished by 36Kr with permission.