Meta Now Tries Poaching From Mira Murati's AI Startup As Zuckerberg’s Hiring Blitz Continues - Report

After making headlines by doling out multi-million-dollar offers to AI talent at rivals like OpenAI and Apple, Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has, of late, sharpened his focus on a new target: Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab.

According to a Wired report, Zuckerberg and his team have approached more than a dozen people at the barely six-month-old company founded by the former CTO of OpenAI.

Quoting unnamed sources, the publication reported that one of those offers was more than $1 billion over a multi-year span, and the rest were between $200 million and $500 million over a four-year span. In the first year alone, some staffers were guaranteed to make between $50 million and $100 million.

Thinking Machines Lab, which launched in February and has about 50 staff members, mostly comprising former OpenAI employees, recently closed a $2 billion funding round by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. None of the staffers that Meta approached has accepted the offer so far, according to the report.

Zuckerberg is on a spree to hire top AI talent in Silicon Valley. He has poached about a dozen people from OpenAI (OPENAI), and a few from Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOGL).

Last month, Meta (META) acquired a 49% stake in enterprise-focused AI startup Scale AI for $14.3 billion. As part of the deal, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang joined Meta to lead its new superintelligence unit.

Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) comprises the company's foundational AI model teams, product groups, and its longstanding Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) division. Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, co‑leads MSL with Wang.

According to Wired's reporting, Zuckerberg's initial outreach is low-key. In some cases, he sent recruits a direct message on WhatsApp asking to talk. From then on, the interviews move fast. Wired also reshared one of Zuckerberg's initial messages to a potential recruit.

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