India, June 29 -- A former Google employee who earned nearly $1 million in a single year has revealed why he walked away from the tech giant to launch his own artificial intelligence startup.

In an as-told-to essay published by Business Insider, Yousuf Imran, a 41-year-old former account executive based in the San Francisco Bay Area, said that although Google paid him exceptionally well, he experienced "FOMO (Fear of missing out)" as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic offered stock packages that could be "life-changing."

"I earned nearly $1 million last year as an account executive at Google, but I felt some 'FOMO' around the AI boom," he wrote, adding that the prospect of owning equity in his own company ultimately outweighed the fina...