Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant Meta’s hiring push in the AI space continues, as the company has reportedly hired three more employees from Thinking Machines Lab, the $12 billion startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mira Murati. The latest move comes after months of aggressive recruitment efforts by Meta, which has been targeting top talent from rival AI companies.
According to a Business Insider report, Mark Jen and Yinghai Lu, both part of the startup’s founding team, have left Thinking Machines Lab and joined Meta. Jen is a software engineer who previously worked at Meta, while Lu has previous experience at both Meta and OpenAI and focuses on AI inference, which helps improve how chatbots reason.A third employee, Tianyi Zhang, an AI researcher known for widely cited academic work, has also moved to Meta, the report says.
Mark Zuckerberg ’s ‘full scale raid’ on Thinking Labs
The latest hires add to a growing list of employees Meta has recruited from Mira Murati’s startup. As per previous report, Meta has already hired several members of the founding team, including Joshua Gross earlier this month. Gross worked on the company’s main product.Last year in August, Meta tried to buy OpenAI’s former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mira Murati startup, Thinking Machines Lab. But as she declined to sell her company despite a $1 billion offer, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded by launching a “full-scale raid” on the startup.
Meta hired fifth founding member from Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab
Earlier this month, Meta hired veteran software engineer Joshua Gross, who helped build and ship Thinking Machines Lab’s flagship product Tinker from “zero-to-one”. As per his LinkedIn profile, Gross leads the engineering teams at Meta Superintelligence Labs. He had earlier worked at both OpenAI and Meta before cofounding Murati’s startup.Thinking Machines Lab, launched last year, quickly became a major hub for AI talent after raising $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation. The company has expanded its team rapidly, with its workforce growing to around 130 people.At the same time, it has faced strong hiring pressure from competitors. OpenAI has also recruited from the startup, while Thinking Machines Lab has brought in well-known figures such as Soumith Chintala, creator of PyTorch, as its CTO.
