Despite receiving staggering job offers from Meta—including one valued at $1 billion over several years—not a single researcher from Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab (TML) has accepted the proposals. Other offers reportedly ranged between $200 million and $500 million, with equity vesting over four years. Yet, according to a source cited by Wired, “So far at Thinking Machines Lab, not a single person has taken the offer.”
The extraordinary refusal of such lucrative deals reflects the deep commitment and loyalty that TML’s team has toward Murati’s mission and leadership. Thinking Machines Lab, the AI venture founded by the former OpenAI CTO, has already reached a valuation of $12 billion, remarkably, without having launched a single commercial product to date.
This rare show of collective resolve has drawn attention across Silicon Valley, particularly as Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, led by Alexandr Wang of Scale AI and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, continues its aggressive recruitment drive to build a premier AI research unit.
However, TML researchers are reportedly unconvinced by Meta’s direction, especially its perceived focus on “AI slop” for consumer platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, there are internal concerns about Wang’s leadership style, which some team members find unappealing or misaligned with their own values.
The TML team’s steadfast loyalty to Murati and her vision appears to outweigh even the most eye-popping compensation offers. Their stance highlights a growing trend among elite AI researchers, where mission alignment, leadership trust, and long-term vision are increasingly prioritized over financial incentives.
In an industry often driven by talent wars and billion-dollar lures, Thinking Machines Lab has emerged as a powerful exception—a team bound not by paycheck size but by a shared purpose and belief in their founder’s direction.
