Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his billion-dollar recruiting offer for a staffer working for former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati's AI lab rejected, according to Wired Magazine. Meta's attempts to recruit OpenAI and other AI lab employees have made rounds this month and stunned observers with the compensation offered, which is higher than what top executives make at most companies. However, those approached at Murati's startup, called the Thinking Machines Lab, have turned down offers that ranged between $200 million and $1 billion due to concerns about working culture and overall development goals.
Meta Offers As Much As $1 Billion To Staffer At Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's AI Startup
Meta and Zuckerberg's attempts to recruit top talent from OpenAI started making rounds last month when OpenAI reported that 'someone was trying to break into its house.' The offers made to former OpenAI employees touched $100 million and surprised observers with their scale. Meta made the offers as part of its recruitment drive for a new Superintelligence lab, and a new report from Wired suggests that the firm recently turned its sights on the Thinking Machines Lab - a startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and valued at $12 billion.
According to the details, Meta significantly upped its offers for TML employees as they ranged from $200 million to $1 billion spread out over four or multiple years. A Meta spokesperson commented on the story and admitted that the offers were made, but added that the "details were off." The spokesperson did not provide the correct details and wondered who was "spinning this narrative."
Within these offers, just one touched the unbelievable $1 billion mark but it was turned down. Some of the reasons why TML employees and staffers turned down Meta's offers include concerns about the working culture at Meta's Superintelligence lab and the lab's overall goals. Meta made headlines after it bought a 49% stake in Alexandr Wang's Scale AI in June and brought it under the wing of its Superintellgence lab.
TML staffers, among others, are concerned about working under Wang. They are also hesitant to join Meta due to worries about eventually creating AI products for the firm's Instagram and Facebook social media services. TML staffers want to work on broader objectives such as artificial super intelligence. Meta's multibillion dollar investments into its Superintellgence labs have also generated worries that the firm will now seek to recover the investment by focusing on for-profit AI.
In an interview with The Information earlier this month , Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg refuted reports that his firm had offered $200 million pay packages to recruit AI researchers and engineers. However, he added that the billions of dollars invested in computation hardware meant that it made sense to recruit only the best AI developers in the world.
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