Meta Platforms has intensified hiring for its newly formed Meta Superintelligence Labs, approaching more than a dozen researchers at Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial-intelligence start-up led by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, Wired reported on 29 July. One Thinking Machines employee was offered a compensation package exceeding $1 billion over multiple years, while others received proposals ranging from $200 million to $500 million for four-year terms, with first-year payouts as high as $100 million, according to people familiar with the talks. Despite what is believed to be the richest set of recruiting packages ever offered to individual technologists, none of the targeted staff have accepted. The reluctance comes as Thinking Machines, barely a year old, is already valued at about $12 billion and backed by a record seed round, giving employees both equity upside and financial security. Meta’s pitch is part of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to assemble a top-tier team capable of building open-source models that can compete with offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic. The division is co-led by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Wired said some candidates questioned the new lab’s strategy and leadership, and Meta declined to comment for the story.