Meta’s Pursuit of Thinking Machines Lab: A Major Recruitment Attempt
Meta has made headlines following its effort to acquire Thinking Machines Lab, a startup founded by Mira Murati, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of OpenAI. Despite a staggering $1 billion offer, Murati opted not to sell her company, prompting a robust response from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg subsequently instigated a concerted effort to entice more than a dozen of the startup’s 50 employees to consider leaving their current positions.
One of Zuckerberg’s primary targets was Andrew Tulloch, a distinguished researcher and co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab. A recent article in Wired emphasized the relentless pursuit of talent by Meta, revealing the intriguing dynamics of high-stakes recruitment in the artificial intelligence sector.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Magnanimous Offer to Andrew Tulloch
In an effort to secure Tulloch’s expertise, Zuckerberg proposed a lucrative compensation package that could amount to an impressive $1.5 billion over a six-year tenure, heavily contingent on performance bonuses and fluctuations in Meta’s stock value. Nevertheless, Tulloch declined this lucrative offer.
Meta’s recruitment endeavors have emphasized attracting talent from notable institutions, including OpenAI and startups spearheaded by former employees like Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab and Dario Amodei’s Anthropic. Reports indicate that Meta has engaged over 100 OpenAI employees, successfully recruiting at least 10.
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, labeled the $1.5 billion offer as “inaccurate and ridiculous,” clarifying that compensation packages hinge on stock performance. He further affirmed that the company is not actively pursuing the acquisition of Thinking Machines Lab.
Profile: Andrew Tulloch
Andrew Tulloch’s academic journey commenced at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with first-class honors, achieving a prestigious University Medal in mathematics. He then pursued a Master’s degree in Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge and completed a PhD at UC Berkeley.
During his tenure at Meta from 2012 to 2023, Tulloch was pivotal in constructing machine learning systems and contributed significantly to the development of PyTorch, a widely utilized framework in the AI research community. His contributions markedly shaped Meta’s AI capabilities.
Alexandr Wang, who currently heads Meta’s superintelligence lab, also endeavored to persuade Tulloch to join the organization. Prior to his stint at OpenAI, where he was recruited in 2023, Tulloch rejected an offer from Greg Brockman of OpenAI back in 2016, citing an inability of the organization to match his existing salary at Facebook.
At OpenAI, Tulloch played an instrumental role in developing the pretraining and reasoning models for GPT-4. In early 2025, he co-founded Thinking Machines Lab.
Source link: Timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
