Top AI researcher rejects Meta’s staggering $1 billion offer: Report

Meta's recruitment efforts for its superintelligence unit have been unsuccessful, with employees of Thinking Machines Lab rejecting offers of up to $1 billion.

Published on: Jul 30, 2025, 09:34:12 IST

By Sanya Jain

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After successfully poaching some top AI researchers from OpenAI, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg seems to have set his eyes on a new target – Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab. This time, however, Zuckerberg’s attempts to poach talent for the newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs may have hit a roadblock.

Meta's hiring efforts seem to have hit a roadblock at Thinking Machines Lab (Unsplash - representational image)

According to a report in Wired, not a single person at Thinking Machines Lab has accepted Meta’s offer.

The rejections come in spite of Meta dangling staggering paychecks as enticement. One person was offered $1 billion over a multi-year span, the report stated. Others were offered between $200 million and $500 million to be vested over a period of four years, multiple sources confirmed to Wired.

“So far at Thinking Machines Lab, not a single person has taken the offer,” the report said.

What is Thinking Machines Lab?

Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company led by Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI. The startup was valued at $12 billion in its seed round despite not having launched a product yet.

Why are employees rejecting Meta offers?

AI researchers may be reluctant to join Meta Superintelligence Labs due to Scale AI cofounder Alexandr Wang, who has been recruited to lead the new unit. Meta’s new superintelligence unit is being led by Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

However, some Thinking Machines Lab employees approached by Meta may have reservations about Wang’s leadership style and relative lack of experience.

Other employees told Wired that they did not feel inspired by Meta’s product roadmap. They feel that Meta’s mission is to create “AI slop” for Facebook and Instagram, while startups like TML and OpenAI are aiming for artificial general intelligence.

(Also read: IITian and ‘highly influential’ OpenAI researcher quits AI firm to join Meta: ‘Thrilled’)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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