Freelance rate $1000/hour

This post is not very idea or product related, but since there is probably majority of developers I decided to post my question here. I recently googled for freelancers rates (I personally work as a full stack contractor for a EU company) and found an article (even a few articles in Bloomberg, Financial post etc) about a dev named James Knight who “left Google and makes $1000/hour” as a freelancer.

And I started to wonder if this person is even real or this is just a campaign ordered by some freelance marketplaces. I know there are $150-$200 rates out there that still seem to me are not so easy to get, but a $1k?

Anyone knows someone who makes at least half of it being involved in software development and what exactly do these people do?

Sorry again if this topic is not that about the leitmotif here but honestly don’t know where else to ask.