After nearly nine months of aggressive poaching, Meta CTO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have succeeded in his ‘almost full-scale raid” on Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, as yet another founding member has left the startup to join Meta. In August last year, it was reported that Meta tried to buy OpenAI’s former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mira Murati startup, Thinking Machines Lab. But as she declined to sell her company despite a $1 billion offer, Mark Zuckerberg “responded by launching a full-scale raid. Now a report by Business Insider, suggests that Meta has poached fifth founding member of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab.
Meta hired fifth founding member from Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab
As reported by Business Insider, Veteran software engineer Joshua Gross, who helped build and ship Thinking Machines Lab’s flagship product Tinker from “zero-to-one,” has joined Meta Superintelligence Labs. As per his LinkedIn profile, Gross now leads the engineering teams at Meta. He had earlier worked at both OpenAI and Meta before cofounding Murati’s startup.The departure of Gross from Thinking Machines Lab marks the fifth founding member leaving the AI startup for Meta following Andrew Tullouch and others. In order to lure Tulloch, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg offered a pay package that could reach $1.5 billion over six years, depending on bonuses and Meta’s stock performance. However, Tulloch also turned down the offer.
Talent wars heat up
Thinking Machines Lab, founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raised $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation last year and quickly became a hub for top AI talent. But the startup has faced relentless poaching as Silicon Valley’s AI talent wars intensify.* Meta has hired five of its founding members.* OpenAI recruited former CTO Barret Zoph and cybersecurity expert Jolene Parish.* Thinking Machines Lab countered by bringing in Soumith Chintala, creator of PyTorch, as CTO, and quietly hiring Neal Wu, a decorated programming Olympiad gold medalist.
