Thinking Machines Lab’s Andrew Tulloch is the latest engineer to reject Mark Zuckerberg as Meta scrambles to pull ahead in the AI race.

The University of Sydney alum and Perth native was reportedly offered a compensation package worth as much as US$1.5 billion over “at least six years” to jump ship.

Though as alluded to above, Tulloch isn’t the only star player Zuckerberg and his tech empire have sought to poach…

If you needed any further confirmation that artificial intelligence (AI) is the future, just look at who Mark Zuckerberg is targeting for acquisition.

Over the past few months, headlines have reported that the founder & CEO of Meta – parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – has been offering a king’s ransom for senior engineers to join his newly-founded superintelligence lab.

To the point where US$100 million per year contracts have become the norm.

Zuckerberg even attempted to acquire fledgling startups like the US$12 billion Thinking Machines Lab helmed by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, Mira Murati. But when the latter respectfully declined, Meta responded by “launching a full-scale raid.”

“In the following weeks, [Zuckerberg] approached more than a dozen of Murati’s roughly 50 employees to sound them out about jumping ship. His chief target: Andrew Tulloch, a leading researcher and co-founder at the startup,” reveals Berber Jin and Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal.

Here he is: the man who turned down a $1B offer over 4yrs from Meta. pic.twitter.com/fLqVxZFWFz

— Deedy (@deedydas) August 2, 2025

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As per his LinkedIn profile, this wasn’t the first time that Tulloch – the Perth-born University of Sydney graduate, and University of Cambridge alum – had crossed paths with Mark Zuckerberg.

The homegrown AI boffin was previously employed by Meta as a “Distinguished Engineer” in its nascent AI arm following a brief stint at Goldman Sachs as a strategist. After just under 12 years, he made the leap to Sam Altman’s OpenAI in 2024, before the exodus with Murati a year later.

Jin and Hagey continue: “To peel him off, Zuckerberg dangled a billion-dollar package that could, with top bonuses and extraordinary stock performance, have been worth as much as $1.5 billion over at least six years, according to people familiar with the matter… Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the description of the offer ‘inaccurate and ridiculous’ and said that any compensation package is predicated on a stock rising.”

In any case, neither Andrew Tulloch nor any of his colleagues were enticed by the prospect of a Kylian Mbappe-calibre payday. And while nobody from Thinking Machines Lab has publicly clarified why, The Wall Street Journal has provided some parallel insight regarding the matter:

“The OpenAI researchers who have so far rebuffed Meta’s advances chose to remain because they believed OpenAI was the closest to reaching artificial general intelligence, wanted to work at a smaller company, and were wary of having the fruits of their labours go toward a product that was primarily driven by advertising, according to people familiar with the matter.”

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Fair play. Couldn’t be us. Or the 10 out of 100 OpenAI employees who actually declared for team Meta (including Chinese researcher Shengjia Zhao, who now leads its superintelligence operation).

But before you quit your gig to knock on Mark Zuckerberg’s door with that CV in hand, do note that the company obviously isn’t shelling out nine-to-ten figures for any old schlub who fancies themselves a ChatGPT whisperer. This is an arena for professional commodities only.

“Look, the market’s hot. It’s not that hot. Okay?” said Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.

“We have a small number of leadership roles that we’re hiring for, and those people do command a premium.”

Translation: anything less than an Andrew Tulloch can jog on. 99.95 ATAR, Christ Church Grammar vice captaincy, and all.