- Mira Murati's startup turned down Meta's $1bn offer to hire an employee
- Meta approached over a dozen Thinking Machines Lab employees for AI division
- Mark Zuckerberg personally contacted some employees at Murati's startup
OpenAI's former Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, is making headlines after a report revealed that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta failed to poach employees from her startup even after offering $1 billion to an employee.
A report by Wired has revealed that Murati's staff at Thinking Machines Lab has turned down massive offers from Meta. The US tech giant was attempting to hire employees for its new AI division, Meta Superintelligence Labs.
The report highlighted that Meta contacted over a dozen employees at Murati's one-year-old startup. One of the employees was offered $1 billion, while others were promised $200 to $500 million in compensation over the years. However, nobody accepted Meta's attractive offer.
According to the report, Zuckerberg himself personally reached out to some of the Thinking Machines Lab employees. This development indicated the strong belief that Murati's team has in her, even though Thinking Machines Lab is a new startup and has not released any product yet. It is currently valued at $12 billion.
Who Is Mira Murati?
The former CTO at OpenAI has over a decade of leadership experience in the tech industry. The 36-year-old Albanian engineer is known for leading product development teams for applications such as DALL-E and ChatGPT.
She was previously also associated with Ultraleap (previously called Leap Motion) and is known for leading the design, development, and launch of vehicle products such as the Model X at Tesla Motors.
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was ousted from the company in a dramatic coup in November 2023, Murati was chosen to become the interim CEO. She was among the executives to voice concern about Altman's leadership style. Notably, Altman was reinstated as the CEO days later. In September 2024, she left OpenAI to launch her venture in the tech world.
She was named in Time's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024. She was also labelled as Fortune 100 Most Powerful Women In Business in 2023 for “being a leading figure shaping the business world's increasingly AI-centric future”.
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