Thinking Machines Lab Co-Founder Departs for Meta
Andrew Tulloch is the latest big-name AI researcher to join the social-media giant
- Andrew Tulloch, a co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, departed to join Meta Platforms, the startup confirmed.
- Tulloch previously worked at Meta for 11 years, then OpenAI, before co-founding Thinking Machines Lab this year.
- Meta has recruited over 50 AI researchers, engineers and other employees, restructuring its AI teams into the new Superintelligence Labs division.
A co-founder of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab has left to join Meta Platforms META -3.85%decrease; red down pointing triangle, the startup confirmed Saturday.
Andrew Tulloch, a star AI researcher, confirmed his departure in a message to employees on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Andrew has decided to pursue a different path for personal reasons,” a spokeswoman for Thinking Machines Lab said in a statement.
Tulloch is a leading researcher in the field of artificial intelligence and previously worked at Meta for 11 years. He left in 2023 to join OpenAI for a stint before co-founding Thinking Machines Lab alongside Murati at the start of this year.
The hire is the latest recruiting coup for Meta, which has wound down its hiring spree from its headiest days, as it shifts focus to organizing its new talent-dense AI teams and pursuing the invention of what it calls superintelligence.
The Thinking Machines spokeswoman said Tulloch’s contributions “have been foundational” in getting the company to where it is today. “We’re grateful for what he helped build here and are committed to finishing what we started together,” she said.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Tulloch was offered a pay package from Meta that could have been worth as much as $1.5 billion with top bonuses and extraordinary stock performance but declined it. A Meta spokesman previously called the description of the offer “inaccurate and ridiculous” and said that the size of any compensation package is predicated on a stock rising. The terms of the offer he accepted couldn’t be learned.
Tulloch didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Tulloch was one of more than a dozen Thinking Machines employees approached by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg over the summer. It is unclear which team he will be on at Meta.
Murati launched Thinking Machines in February, bringing more than 20 of her former OpenAI colleagues along with her. The company has raised $2 billion and launched its first product, Tinker, an API for fine-tuning large language models, earlier this month.
Meta, like the other top tech firms, has enormous AI ambitions. The company plans to spend up to $72 billion on capital expenditures this year alone, largely to build out data centers to train its AI models. It released its latest AI product, an AI video generator with a dedicated tab for the feature in its Meta AI app, in recent weeks. OpenAI released a similar product soon after.
Zuckerberg has been the company’s recruiter-in-chief in recent months, reaching out to AI researchers directly via email and WhatsApp messages and inviting them to his homes for meals and pitches. He went after top talent, offering pay packages worth $100 million or more in some cases.
Meta ultimately hired more than 50 AI researchers, engineers and other employees from the likes of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Apple, Anthropic and xAI, and restructured its AI teams into the new Superintelligence Labs division. Meta also struck a deal with data-labeling startup Scale AI for a 49% stake in the company and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to run the new division.
Meta now has four teams under its Superintelligence Labs division, including TBD Lab, a group that sits near Zuckerberg’s desk and is working on the next iterations of the company’s large language model, called Llama.