Can we get a fact check, YC?
But that's not likely.
From the point of view of a buyer who spent $100M and got 10 engineers out of the deal, the cost was $10M/engineer, whether the engineers each got $10M injected into their pockets or not.
That's not even so: he didn't buy the engineers, they are not his property and they are free to walk away the day after, so he hardly got them. For a day, OK :-)
In acquihire-land, that's the short-hand terminology that is often used. I'm sure there are more precise (and lengthy) ways to say the same thing.
from the perspective of the buyer, this is all part of the cost of the transaction