Andrew Tulloch: Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta is on a poaching spree to acquire the top-level AI researchers and experts from companies in the field globally, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and rising AI startups. Some reports say Meta is offering up to $100-million whopping payout to these coveted experts to join its Meta’s Super intelligence Team.
One of such figures whose name is making headlines is Andrew Tulloch, though the reason is quite different.
Tulloch has made headlines by turning down an almost $1 billion offer, a nine-figure salary. In India, when a six-figure salary is considered as a dream job, it’s unusual for someone to turns down a 9-figure salary.
Andrew Tulloch is a machine learning expert and co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, an AI company led by Mira Murati that aims to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence beyond chatbots.
He recently made headlines after The Wall Street Journal reported that he turned down a staggering nine-figure offer from Meta. The Journal noted that even in Silicon Valley — where massive paychecks are common — it’s rare for someone to walk away from such a deal.
Sources familiar with the matter said the $1.5 billion offer included bonuses and stock-based compensation, making the decision all the more surprising.
Before this, he played a key role in developing GPT-4o and GPT-4.5 during his time at OpenAI, where he worked on large-scale ML systems and o-series reasoning.
Tulloch spent over 11 years at Meta as a Distinguished Engineer, where he focused on machine learning systems and worked extensively with PyTorch. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, developing financial and trading strategies.
Academically, Tulloch holds a Master’s in Mathematical Statistics and Machine Learning from the University of Cambridge, where he earned a distinction and a college prize. He also graduated with First Class Honours and a University Medal from the University of Sydney in Advanced Mathematics.
The co-founder of Alexandr Wang was hired by Meta to lead the Meta’s Superintelligence team and was given a title of Chief AI Officer. His appointment followed Meta’s investment in Scale AI, which valued the data-labelling startup at $29 billion.
Earlier, Meta brough Yunazhi from OpenAI and Anton Bakhtin from Anthropic.
2 India-origin were part of the Meta’s Superintelligence team. Other than Trapit Bansal, Hammad Syed also joined the elite team as a software engineer.
