Woman Rejects Meta's $1 Billion Offer

Mira Murati, former OpenAI CTO and lead of the ChatGPT and DALL-E development teams. Photo: OpenAI .

According to Wired , dozens of employees at Thinking Machines Lab, the mysterious AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, have been approached by Meta with attractive offers.

Notably, inside sources revealed that an AI expert was offered a salary package of more than $1 billion by Facebook's parent company, which would be paid over several years. According to Times of India , Murati was the one who refused this huge offer.

Despite the lucrative offers, none of the Thinking Machines Lab employees accepted to leave. Speaking to Wired , Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, disputed the numbers but confirmed that offers had been made.

The stubbornness of Thinking Machines Lab members is considered a "painful blow" for CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the context of Meta investing heavily in the new Superintelligence lab, the company is said to have spent up to 300 million USD in 4 years to attract some of the leading AI researchers.

Even giants like Apple and OpenAI are "victims" of Facebook's parent company. In just one month, four Apple AI experts have joined Meta's super intelligence team.

Meta has also recruited three other OpenAI experts who are working in the Zurich office, including Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai. All of them worked at DeepMind before moving to OpenAI and helping build the company's office in Switzerland late last year.

Data from filings with the US Department of Labor related to H-1B non-immigrant visas reveals the reality of income in the US technology industry, salaries for professional positions at Meta are at record highs, according to Business Insider.

At Meta, AI engineers and researchers are among the highest paid. According to H-1B filings from the first quarter of 2025, a top AI research engineer can earn up to $440,000 a year. Machine learning engineers are not far behind, with salaries ranging from $165,000 to $440,000 a year.

Additionally, AI research scientists earn between $179,481 and $232,000 per year, while machine learning research scientists earn around $232,000 per year. Notably, an AI product marketing manager at Meta can earn $220,000 per year.

Data professionals also receive competitive salaries. A data science director can pocket $320,000 a year, while data scientists earn between $122,760 and $270,000 a year.

Source: https://znews.vn/nguoi-phu-nu-tu-choi-1-ty-usd-cua-meta-post1573445.html