What Meta Did After Mira Murati Rejected Mark Zuckerberg's Offer To Buy Her Startup

Mark Zuckerberg launched a full-scale recruitment raid on Thinking Machines Lab after founder Mira Murati rejected his offer to acquire the startup.

Meta has been scrambling to catch up in the generative AI race. Zuckerberg reportedly approached Murati, former chief technology officer of OpenAI, and offered to buy her fledgling company.

When she declined, Meta CEO reportedly approached more than a dozen of the startup's employees, offering eye-popping packages to lure them away, The Wall Street Journal reported.

His chief target was Andrew Tulloch, a leading researcher and co-founder at Thinking Machines. Zuckerberg offered him a compensation package that could have been worth as much as $1.5 billion over six years, with bonuses and high-performing stock included.

Tulloch turned it down. None of his colleagues accepted Meta's offers either.

Last week, Mira Murati said her entire team refused Meta's proposals. "So far at Thinking Machines Lab, not a single person has taken the offer," she told Wired.

Meta reportedly made offers ranging from $200 million to $1 billion, structured as salary and stock options vested over four years. One researcher was offered $1 billion alone.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone dismissed the characterisation of the offer as "inaccurate and ridiculous," and said any compensation was tied to stock performance. He also denied that Meta is seeking to acquire Thinking Machines Lab.

Stone disputed that Meta had approached the entire team. "The details are off," he said. "This all begs the question, who is spinning this narrative and why?"

Zuckerberg has targeted OpenAI and alumni-led ventures. Meta has approached over 100 OpenAI employees and hired at least 10. On July 25, Mark Zuckerberg tapped Shengjia Zhao, a Chinese researcher who spent three years at OpenAI, to lead Meta's new superintelligence team.

Zuckerberg has also tried recruiting from Anthropic, the $170 billion AI startup founded by former OpenAI VP Dario Amodei. All seven of Anthropic's co-founders remain with the company.

So far, Meta has hired two employees from Anthropic - Joel Pobar and Anton Bakhtin - both of whom previously worked at Meta.