An Australian tech whiz reportedly so sought after that Meta dangled a $1.5 billion salary package in front of him has already left the company to join one of its biggest rivals in the AI race.
Andrew Tulloch, a Perth-raised AI researcher described by a colleague last year as an “extreme genius”, moved from Facebook’s parent company to Anthropic this month.
Be the first to know when news breaks. Download our new app
News.com.au understands Mr Tulloch has now joined Anthropic’s inference and performance team, focused on training its flagship Claude technology.
Based in San Francisco, Mr Tulloch shot to international attention in August 2025 when news outlet the The Wall Street Journal reported he had turned down a package worth up to US$1 billion to join Meta.
He had at the time worked for AI start-up Thinking Machines Lab, which he co-founded with industry leaders such as former OpenAI chief financial officer Mira Murati.
In a brief response to the reports last year, a Meta spokesperson said the “description of the offer is inaccurate and ridiculous”.
They went on to suggest the reported package was tied to Meta’s stock performance, suggesting anyone working for a public company could earn a similar wage if its value “increases enough”.
Mr Tulloch, educated at the University of Sydney, did eventually take up an offer at Meta once attention had died down for an undisclosed sum. He left only 11 months later.
It was the second time he had worked for Mark Zuckerberg’s company, having previously spent 11 years in its AI research department.
Meta was contacted for comment on Mr Tulloch’s decision to leave.
His exit was announced the day after Meta launched a new AI agent called “Muse”, marketed as a personal assistant that can send emails, book travel or create plans to achieve a user’s goals.
The tech behemoth has been pumping billions into its AI teams and reportedly attempted to poach leading minds from rivals as it sought to establish itself as a frontrunner in the AI race.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman said in June 2025 that Meta had offered US$100 million bonuses ($155 million) to his employees in a bid to win over talent for its generative AI teams.
News of Mr Tulloch’s move to Anthropic comes at a critical juncture in the AI race and just weeks after a former staffer at the frontier tech firm revealed workers feared AI could “kill all humans” in a decade.
Its chief executive Dario Amodei went on to do a round of appearances on some of the US’ most prominent news channels and programs, in which he called for a slowdown on AI development.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” Mr Amodei wrote in a post on his personal website.
“AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious.”
Last week Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined a global push for controls over AI, before revealing rogue OpenAI agents had hacked into a Medicare website in August.
“The rapid development of frontier AI models poses serious risks to safety and security if not appropriately managed,” a joint statement of 22 world leaders reads.
“To realise AI’s potential, industry, governments and society must act now.
“AI must remain under human direction, oversight and control. It must be developed and used in line with international law.”
News.com.au last year revealed his impressive educational and family history, growing up in Claremont as the grandson of former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Marshall.
During his first stint at Meta, according to a CV seen by news.com.au, Mr Tulloch built machine learning platforms “capable of learning multi-billion dimensional weight vectors trained from tens of billions of impressions per day in real time, distributed across hundreds of servers, and predicting millions of examples every second”.
Mr Tulloch graduated from prestigious Christ Church Grammar School in 2007 with a TER of 99.95 and placed second out of 10,000 West Australian students in the final school exams.
He was the school Dux and served as a prefect, as the captain of mock trials and debating and represented Australia in the international Chemistry Olympiad competition.
The Year 12 student was awarded a silver medal at the chemistry competition held in Moscow, ranking 42nd overall and first in the southern hemisphere.
He also went on to work as a strategist for banking giant Goldman Sachs before moving to Meta and later to OpenAI for about 12 months over 2023 and 2024.
Mr Tulloch’s father, Alastair, called his son a “modest” man.
Read related topics:Perth