Mark Zuckerberg’s recent attempt to acquire Mira Murati’s new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, wasn’t just a standard M&A play. When Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, declined the offer, Meta switched tactics to a full-scale talent raid—and failed spectacularly. This isn’t just industry gossip; it’s a critical signal about where the real value lies in the AI talent war.
Meta reportedly approached the startup’s employees with staggering offers. Co-founder and leading researcher Andrew Tulloch was allegedly offered a compensation package worth as much as $1.5 billion over six years. Other offers to researchers ranged from $200 million to a reported $1 billion for a single individual.
And yet, the entire team said no.
Why Billions Weren’t Enough
The unanimous rejection is a powerful testament to something beyond compensation: mission, leadership, and belief. An entire team turning down life-changing money points to a deep-seated confidence in their founder, their vision, and the potential of what they are building together. For top-tier talent, the opportunity to create something new and significant can be more compelling than a massive payout to work on a corporate roadmap.
This outcome demonstrates that a unified team with a strong vision is an incredibly defensible moat. It proves that for the best minds in AI, the what and the who you are building with can be more valuable than the immediate financial reward.
Meta’s Aggressive Talent Strategy
While a Meta spokesman downplayed the story, their broader strategy is clear. They are aggressively pursuing top AI talent wherever they can find it, having already hired over 100 employees from OpenAI and others from Anthropic. When they can’t acquire the company, they try to acquire the team. It’s a direct, if brute-force, approach to closing the perceived AI gap.
The key takeaway is that in the current landscape, loyalty and mission alignment are assets that can’t always be bought—a lesson Meta learned firsthand from Mira Murati and her team at Thinking Machines Lab.