In brief, Meta has successfully recruited five founding members from Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup established by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, after she declined an acquisition offer of approximately $1 billion. The most lucrative single hire, co-founder Andrew Tulloch, received a reported $1.5 billion package over six years. This acquisition is part of a larger AI restructuring, incorporating a $14.3 billion investment into Scale AI, the appointment of Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer, Yann LeCun’s exit after 12 years, 600 research roles cut at FAIR, and the establishment of Meta Superintelligence Labs, which launched its first closed-source model, Muse Spark, on April 8.
Meta has added five founding members of Thinking Machines Lab to its team, the startup that Mira Murati created following her departure as the CTO of OpenAI. The latest member to exit, founding engineer Joshua Gross, joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in March after developing Tinker, the startup’s core API product. His move came after co-founder Andrew Tulloch left for Meta in October, securing a package reportedly valued at $1.5 billion over six years—potentially the largest individual talent acquisition financially in the tech sector.
The strategy became clear after Mark Zuckerberg’s reported $1 billion acquisition offer for Thinking Machines Lab was declined, leading Meta to recruit the founding team individually. This tactic, described by multiple outlets as a “full-scale raid,” proved effective. From the startup’s original founders, five joined Meta, three returned to OpenAI, and one aligned with Elon Musk’s xAI. Murati’s company, which raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in July 2025, and was reportedly seeking a new round at a $50 billion valuation by November, has lost much of its initial team.
Key departures and new affiliations are notable. Tulloch and Gross are the most documented moves; Tulloch, an AI researcher formerly with OpenAI, joined Meta Superintelligence Labs under Alexandr Wang, Meta’s newly appointed chief AI officer as of June 2025. Gross, with experience at both OpenAI and Meta, now leads engineering within the same sector.
Other defectors from Thinking Machines took various paths. Barret Zoph and Luke Metz returned to OpenAI in January 2026, alongside Sam Schoenholz. Zoph was reportedly dismissed by Murati for “unethical conduct” before promptly rejoining OpenAI. Devendra Chaplot left for xAI in March. These exits have prompted Murati to significantly restructure her leadership team, maintaining her role as CEO, with Soumith Chintala from Meta’s FAIR lab as CTO, and John Schulman continuing as chief scientist.
The recruitment efforts are an aspect of a comprehensive reshaping of Meta’s AI organization over the last year. In June 2025, Meta acquired a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion and appointed Wang to spearhead Meta Superintelligence Labs with Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO. Mark Zuckerberg praised Wang as “the most impressive founder of his generation” in an internal note.
The overhaul has been tumultuous. Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist for 12 years and a leading figure in deep learning, left in November 2025 after being asked to report to Wang. LeCun expressed dissatisfaction publicly, criticizing Wang as “young and inexperienced” and suggesting future resignations. Post-departure, LeCun established AMI Labs in Paris with $1 billion, drawing a team primarily from Meta’s AI research.
By August 2025, Meta Superintelligence Labs split into four units: the TBD Lab for large language models led by Wang, FAIR for fundamental research, a products and applied research unit led by Friedman, and an infrastructure segment led by Aparna Ramani. The dissolution of the AGI Foundations team responsible for the Llama model occurred after Llama 4’s mediocre reception, a fact LeCun noted, alleging result manipulation. Around 600 roles within FAIR and AI infrastructure were eliminated in October 2025.
AI talent market compensation has scaled disproportionately, influencing normal hiring practices. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted to offering up to $100 million in signing bonuses for top researchers. Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief scientist, compared Meta’s aggressive recruitment as infringing. Altman claimed Meta resorted to deeper recruitment lists, contradicted by five founders’ departures from a single startup.
The competition includes more than Meta and OpenAI. Anthropic leads what Fortune described as a “one-sided talent war” against OpenAI—retaining 67% of its researchers—and Google DeepMind, retaining 78%. DeepMind countered by enforcing 6-12 month non-compete clauses with full salary. High-stakes recruitment sees offers escalating from millions to hundreds of millions, reaching billions in Tulloch’s