Andrew Tulloch, Poster Child for Out-of-Control AI Spending, Reportedly Quits Meta

AI researcher Andrew Tulloch has left Meta, according to a Semafor report, departing the day after Meta released Muse, an agentic AI platform with coding and computer use capabilities. Tulloch, who worked on superintelligence in Meta's TBD lab under billionaire AI chief Alexandr Wang, had reportedly been offered a pay package worth up to $1.5 billion over six years to join Meta, an offer Meta spokesperson Andy Stone denies. Semafor reports no reason is known for Tulloch's departure and no word on where he is headed.

AI researcher Andrew Tulloch, who is a legend in Silicon Valley for supposedly rejecting a world-historically huge pay package from Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, has quit Meta, according to a report by Semafor https://www.semafor.com/article/09/09/2026/ai-researcher-andrew-tulloch-is-leaving-meta . Tulloch reportedly timed his departure for the day after a major AI product release from the company. Yesterday, Meta released Muse https://gizmodo.com/metas-muse-let-me-waste-a-mind-boggling-amount-of-free-compute-on-nothing-in-particular-2000808945 , an OpenClaw-like agentic AI platform with coding and computer use capabilities. Muse is marketed to mainstream tech users rather than developers or AI specialists. Semafor says no reason is known for Tulloch’s departure, nor is there any word on where he’s headed. A researcher at Meta’s AI rival Anthropic left yesterday and sparked an online frenzy by trumpeting the supposed danger https://gizmodo.com/the-people-building-ai-earnestly-believe-that-it-could-kill-us-all-anthropic-researcher-quits-dramatically-2000808968 of rapid AI research, and the supposed awareness of that danger by industry leaders like Dario Amodei. Tulloch’s personal website https://tullo.ch/ says he grew up in Perth, Australia, and studied math at the University of Sydney, as well as at Cambridge. That site escribes his role at Meta as “working on superintelligence.” He was indeed working at the TBD lab within Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, which Semafor describes as the “center” of Meta’s AI operation. He worked under Meta’s billionaire AI chief Alexandr Wang, co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI. A report from about a year ago in the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-zuckerberg-ai-recruiting-fail-e6107555?mod=article inline tells the supposed story that made Tulloch famous. As part of his quest to catch up to his AI competitors, the story goes that Mark Zuckerberg tried to convince Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by Tulloch and OpenAI former CTO Mira Murati, to be acquired by Meta. When that didn’t work, he turned to the Thinking Machines staff, eventually offering another co-founder Tulloch a pay package that—depending on bonuses and stock performance—could have been worth $1.5 billion over six years. Andy Stone, a Meta spokesperson, denies this outright, and calls the report on the offer “inaccurate and ridiculous.” Then, about ten months ago https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-hires-thinking-machines-co-205750381.html , Tulloch took the job at Meta after all. It’s not known how much he got paid. Gizmodo reached out to Meta for comment on Tulloch’s apparent departure. We will update if we hear back.