Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Tulloch departs for Meta, WSJ reports

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(Reuters) -Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, has left the AI company to join Meta Platforms, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.  

A Thinking Machines Lab spokesperson confirmed the departure to the WSJ, saying that “Andrew has decided to pursue a different path for personal reasons”.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Thinking Machines Lab could not immediately be reached for comment. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously reached out to OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, Mira Murati, and offered to buy her fledgling startup, Thinking Machines Lab, WSJ had earlier reported, stating that upon refusal, Zuckerberg had approached more than a dozen of the startup’s employees, including Tulloch, to jump ship.

Tulloch had been offered a package that could have been worth $1.5 billion over at least six years, with top bonuses and extraordinary stock performance, according to the WSJ.

Zuckerberg has been aggressively hiring from rivals in order to close the gap in advanced AI, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman saying that Meta offered its employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them, as the tech giant seeks to ramp up its artificial intelligence strategy.

Meta has been offering some of Silicon Valley’s most lucrative pay packages and striking startup deals to attract top researchers, a strategy that follows the underwhelming performance of its Llama 4 model.

(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Paul Simao and Alistair Bell)