Who is Andrew Tulloch? High-Profile AI Researcher Reportedly Refuses Meta’s $1billion Recruitment Offer

Since Mark Zuckerberg decided to go aggressively behind AI advancements and decided to form a superintelligence team, his company Meta is in the news for poaching top AI talent from rival companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. But recently many top AI researchers have started refusing Meta’s hefty payment offer to remain with the organizations they are working with. Andrew Tulloch is the most recent name that has been added to the list of names that have denied Meta’s massive $1.5 billion offer to join the tech giant.

Tulloch, a Cambridge graduate and well-known AI researcher, has chosen to stay with a relatively new AI venture, Thinking Machine Lab, which is valued at $12 billion—even though it hasn’t launched any product yet. His career path is a dream run through the tech industry’s biggest names. He started his career with Goldman Sachs as a strategist and worked with Meta for more than a decade before switching to Sam Altman-led OpenAI. He left the firm in 2023 to co-found Thinking Machine Lab with Mira Maruti, former CTO of OpenAI.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Tulloch was one of the few high-profile AI researchers Meta approached for its Superintelligence Lab. The offer reportedly included massive bonuses and stock options totaling up to $1.5 billion over six years, which he reportedly denied to continue his work with his current organization.

Meta spokesperson Andy Tone has denied the report, claiming that figures mentioned in the report are “inaccurate and ridiculous,” saying that compensation depends on stock performance. However, another report by The Wired claims that Meta has failed to hire any of Thinking Machine Lab’s talent despite lucrative offers.

Some insiders claim that concerns about leadership under Scale AI co-founder Alexander Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are one of the reasons for these decisions.

Tulloch’s decision to deny Meta’s offer has attracted huge attention on social media. A screenshot of his LinkedIn profile is going viral, showing his transition from Goldman Sachs to Meta, OpenAI, and then Thinking Machine Lab.

Before graduation he worked with Meta’s advertising machine learning systems, focusing on feature engineering and real-time inference. His decision to decline one of the biggest compensations has ignited conversation across Silicon Valley.