Some Silicon Valley AI startups are asking employees to adopt China’s outlawed ‘996’ work model

Beatrice previously worked as a reporter at Insider, covering stories AI and Big

The trend has sparked debate across the U.S. and Europe, with some leaders endorsing the pace while others warn it risks mass burnout and startup failure

Silicon Valley’s startup hustle culture is starting to look more and more an outlawed Chinese working schedule

Startups, especially in the AI space, are openly asking new starts to accept the longer working hours

For example, AI start-up Rilla tells spective employees in current job listings not to even bother applying unless they are excited “working ~70 hrs/week in person with some of the most ambitious people in NYC.” The company’s head of growth, Will Gao, told Wired there was a growing Gen-Z subculture “who grew up listening to stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their s to building life-changing companies.” He said nearly all of Rilla’s 80-person workforce works on a 996 schedule

The rise of the controversial work culture appears to have been born out of the current efficiency squeeze in Silicon Valley

Rounds of mass layoffs and the rise of AI have put pressure and turned up the heat on employees who managed to keep their jobs

For example, in February, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told employees who work on Gemini that he being in the office at least every weekday and said 60 hours is the “sweet spot” for ductivity

Other CEOs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have stressed that ductivity among workers is king, even if that means working hours or days of overtime

Part of the reasoning for the intense work schedules is a desire to compete with China amid a global AI race

Especially after Chinese startup DeepSeek released an AI model on par with some of the top U.S. offerings, rocking leading AI labs

At the time, the move was part of the Chinese Communist Party’s broader campaign to reduce inequality in Chinese society and limit the power of the nation’s largest companies

But the practice has already spilled over to other countries

Earlier this summer, the European sector also found itself in a heated debate over the working culture

Partly exacerbated by an debate Europe’s competitiveness in the nology and AI space, some European VCs warned that more work and longer hours may be needed to effectively compete

Harry Stebbings, founder of the 20VC fund, said on LinkedIn in June that Silicon Valley had “turned up the intensity,” and European founders needed to take notice. “[Seven] days a week is the required velocity to win right now

There is no room for slip up,” Stebbings said in the post. “You aren’t competing against random company in Germany etc but the best in the world.” Some other founders weighed in, criticizing the rise of the 996 working culture and warning that it could quickly lead to burnout culture

Among them was Ivee Miller, a general partner at Balderton Capital. “Burnout [is] one of the top 3 reasons early-stage ventures fail

It is literally a bad reason to invest,” Miller said on LinkedIn

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