Meta’s pursuit of AI dominance hit a dramatic note last week with reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered a staggering $1.5 billion compensation package to Thinking Machines Labs co-founder Andrew Tulloch—shortly after the company reportedly declined an acquisition offer. While Meta has denied the claims, the incident underscores the current reality: top-tier AI talent is now the most valuable asset in tech. In a twist of “Airony,” the industry viewed as a threat to human jo

Thinking Machines Labs just revealed they’re building a “multimodal AI” system designed to work with language, visuals, and sound — aiming for what they call “collaborative general intelligence.” Backed by a staggering $2 billion seed round led by a16z and filled with ex-OpenAI talent, the young startup is quickly becoming one of the most closely watched players in the next wave of frontier AI.

AI firms are in a fierce talent bidding war, offering huge salaries to top engineers and researchers. From Meta’s aggressive buyouts to startups paying $500K+, it’s a gold rush for skilled tech pros. If you’re technical, this may be your best chance to profit by building the future, not just using it.

Thinking Machines is likely building it's own ChatGPT style model given the background of most of its team (shown here). That could position them as an attractive acquisition target from the mega tech corps who are struggling to keep up with Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.