and... the VC is Google.

Gotta compensate them somehow.

Google stock would drop big if this new company was being funded by competitors

Sometimes you got to find a way to buy the silence of your top employee, to prevent them from going to the competition. This "start-up" is shallow as hell

These people are all already making 9 figure compensation packages, I think if they thought they could do the work they wanted at Google, they would.

My thoughts exactly

For all we know, they could have been successfully working on "10. Prevent Nuclear Terror" for the last 80+ years.