Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to purchase former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s AI startup Pondering Machines Lab a number of months in the past. Nevertheless, when Murati refused, Meta responded by launching a full-scale recruitment drive focusing on the startup and approached greater than a dozen out of her 50 staff, in line with a report by Wall Road Journal.
Nevertheless, the chief goal for Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, Meta’s newly appointed head of Superintelligence Labs, was Murati’s co-founder Andrew Tulloch. Reportedly, Zuckerberg and Wang peppered Tulloch with messages asking him to hitch and supplied a $1 billion pay package deal. Tulloch might have made as a lot as $1.5 billion, together with high bonuses and inventory efficiency, over a interval of six years.
Nevertheless, not solely did Tulloch say no, none of Thinking Machines Lab‘s staff left both.
Who’s Andrew Tulloch?
Initially from Australia, Tulloch is a co-founder at Pondering Machines Lab. Whereas not a lot is thought concerning the startup, Murati has raised over $2 billion from traders. The corporate’s acknowledged mission is to make “AI methods extra extensively understood, customizable and customarily succesful.”.
Murati has stated that the startup will share its first product within the “subsequent couple months”. It has reportedly leased an workplace in a quieter a part of San Francisco’s Mission District, a few blocks from OpenAI.
Tulloch graduated from the College of Sydney and had the best GPA amongst science college students. After that, he labored on machine studying at Fb for 18 months earlier than beginning graduate faculty at Cambridge.
He ultimately went on to work at Fb’s AI Analysis Group and have become a distinguished engineer. OpenAI President Greg Brockman tried to rent him in 2016 as one of many firm’s first staff, however he was apprehensive about taking a big pay reduce from his $800,000 job at Fb and determined to not be a part of the startup. OpenAI was paying its new recruits an annual wage of $175,000 and a $125,000 annual bonus.
Tulloch did go on to hitch OpenAI in 2023 after ChatGPT had already turn into a viral sensation.
Mark Zuckerberg’s try to purchase Pondering Machines Lab
As per a report by Wired, Mira Murati‘s AI startup Pondering Machines Lab was supplied $1 billion by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to hitch its AI Superintelligence workforce.
“To this point at Pondering Machines Lab, not a single particular person has taken the provide,” Murati was quoted as saying by the outlet.
In line with the report, Mira Murati’s workforce members had been supplied packages that ranged between $200,000 to $1 billion, each single considered one of which was rejected as staff refused to hitch the Meta Superintelligence Lab.
Notably, Zuckerberg has been making an attempt to revive Meta’s AI efforts in current months after the corporate’s Llama 4 fashions failed to realize widespread recognition in comparison with rival fashions from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The Meta CEO has arrange a brand new Superintelligence Labs unit within the firm to purpose for ‘superintilligence’ — the cognitive efficiency of the brightest and most gifted human beings.
Meta has additionally acquired a 49 p.c stake in AI startup Scale AI for $14.8 billion and AI-generated human voices startup Play AI. The corporate has additionally tried to poach tons of of OpenAI researchers and introduced no less than 10 of them onboard together with many others from Apple, Google and Anthropic.
