You’ve probably never heard of Mira Murati. But in the world of AI—or at least in the world of Mark Zuckerberg—she is worth nearly as much as Taylor Swift.
In Meta’s attempt to win the AI race and achieve superintelligence—the leaders in the space are OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind—they have set out to get the very best AI researchers. And it turns out, it’s a bit like finding a star quarterback or power forward: There are only a certain number of people who have the talent, skills, and brains to deliver.
Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI, is one of them. Her new start-up, Thinking Machines Lab, already has a valuation of $12 billion, even without a concrete product.
Meta tried to acquire Mira Murati and her fledgling start-up. Murati declined. Then, according to The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg tried to hire other people from Thinking Machines. All declined to jump ship—at least for now. That includes Andrew Tulloch, a co-founder at the start-up, who was reportedly offered more than a $1 billion pay package. (Meta disputes the $1 billion number; a spokesman called it “inaccurate and ridiculous.”)
But others have found Zuckerberg’s offers too big to pass up. A 24-year-old researcher named Matt Deitke said yes to a salary of some $250 million over four years. Again, this is not the number for the acquisition of a company. It’s for the acquisition of a single worker. There are rumors of much higher salary offers yet.
How can those wages be for real? Can any human be worth so much? These are not start-up founders—they are individual workers. And they are going to be paid more than Michael Jordan ever was.
