Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered a massive $1.5 billion compensation package to Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, in a bid to recruit him. Tulloch declined the offer, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The attempted hire followed Meta’s failed $1 billion acquisition attempt of the AI startup, now valued at $12 billion, despite not having launched a product. Tulloch, a former Facebook and OpenAI researcher, has since become a central figure in Silicon Valley’s AI talent wars.
A Meta spokesperson dismissed the reported offer as “inaccurate,” but industry insiders view Tulloch’s rejection as symbolic of a growing preference among top AI talent for independence over corporate packages.
Tulloch, an Australian computer scientist, previously helped build key ML tools at Facebook and worked on GPT-4 at OpenAI. His LinkedIn profile has since gone viral, hailed as a roadmap for AI career success.
