October 13, 2025

In a thrilling twist in the AI world, Meta has hired Andrew Tulloch, the clever cofounder of the AI startup Thinking Machines Lab! This news was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, turning heads in the tech community. Think about it—Tulloch once worked at OpenAI and Facebook’s AI Research Group, packing a powerful punch of experience. The startup Thinking Machines Lab is no ordinary company. Led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, it was founded in February 2025 with the bold mission to create general-purpose, accessible, and ethical AI systems. The team is a star-studded squad of about 30 engineers and researchers, with nearly two-thirds coming straight from OpenAI. Meta had tried to connect with this dazzling startup before, but some claims were denied by the tech giant. Now, with Tulloch joining in, Meta clearly means business in the AI talent war! "He has decided to pursue a different path for personal reasons," a spokesperson from Thinking Machines Lab told the Wall Street Journal about Tulloch’s exit, keeping the reasons a bit mysterious but honest. Thinking Machines Lab is working hard on a next-generation AI platform that promises smarter and more collaborative human-AI interactions. Imagine AI that feels more like a helpful partner than just a machine! Besides Tulloch, the startup attracted top talent from Meta and the French AI startup Mistral, showing how magnetic the company is. This startup joins the league of AI companies born from former OpenAI stars. Big names like Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI VP Dario Amodei with a whopping $3 billion annual revenue, and Safe Superintelligence Inc, started by former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, valued around $20 billion, are all part of this exciting race. Just last July, Thinking Machines Lab raised about $2 billion with a $12 billion valuation in a round led by big players like Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Accel, and others. That's serious money fueling serious dreams! So, the plot thickens in the AI world. With Meta grabbing Tulloch and Thinking Machines Lab pushing forward under Mira Murati’s dynamic leadership, the race to build the future of AI is on fire!

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Tags: Andrew tulloch, Thinking machines lab, Meta, Ai startup, Mira murati, Openai,