Daybreak - Why some of AI's brightest minds are rejecting billions from big tech

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Earlier this week, Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Thinking Machines and one of the key engineers behind OpenAI's GPT-4, reportedly said no to a jaw-dropping $1 billion offer from Zuckerberg's Meta. Why would anyone say no to that kind of money? The answer lies in a high-stakes conflict for the soul of AI. From Microsoft crippling Inflection AI and Meta’s $200M poaching spree to a growing rebellion led by top AI minds like Mira Murati, Andrew Tulloch, and Dario Amodei, we look at big tech’s desperate bid to own AI by buying its creators.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the same. secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they managed to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into.

to the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert, as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast. or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode.

You probably think that the biggest battle in AI today is about who can build the fastest chip, or maybe the biggest model. But it's not. The real conflict is a high-stakes talent heist, a war for minds, and right now, it is being fought over a handful of brilliant people who seem to be the most valuable assets on the planet.

And this week, we got a stunning case study on this that shows just how desperate big tech is to get its hands on these people. A new report from the Wall Street Journal and other outlets dropped a number that has the entire tech world buzzing. One billion dollars. That is a staggering figure that Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered Andrew Talok. He is a top AI mind. and Zuckerberg wanted him to leave his new startup and join meta.

Now, Andrew Tulloch is no ordinary engineer. He co-founded a new AI lab called Thinking Machines with none other than Mira Murati. She is the former chief technology officer of Open AI. Tulloch was one of the key architects behind models like GPD4. And he turned down Zuckerberg's offer. Now, a meta spokesperson called the report inaccurate and ridiculous. But the fact that even a number... number in this galaxy can be floated credibly tells you everything.

The true value in AI is not in a data center. It is clearly in the human brain. And this is not about money. It is a war, quiet, aggressive, strategic for talent, and it is shaking startups to their core. Do you remember what happened to Inflection AI? It was one of the most promising AI startups and got $1 billion, more than $1 billion in funding.

And then in March 2024, Microsoft, came along and hired its co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleiman along with nearly the entire technical team. Microsoft reportedly paid around $100 million in bonuses just to acquire this talent. Overnight, inflection and all its potential stopped to exist. This is the bigger picture. For big tech, it is a shortcut. Why spend years and billions of dollars trying to replicate a competitor's R&D? when you can just spend a billion dollars and buy their key people instead.

It is a move that saves time, money, and more importantly, secures intellectual capital. So, you see, for a founder like Mira Murati, seeing your co-founder get a call with a billion dollar offer is not just a business problem. It is an existential threat. A high-stakes war for the soul of AI seems to be unfolding right in front of us. It is where a few companies are consolidating power at a dangerous base. It is why the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, famously quit Google in 2023 to warn us all about the dangers of the very technology that he helped to create. And it is why Ilya Satskiva, a co-founder and former chief scientist at Open AI, was a central figure in the Open AI board crisis before he left to found his own company called Safe Super Intelligence. Its singular mission is to build safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence or AGI.

So today we delve deeper into why some of the world's most valuable talent is choosing to build something small over joining the biggest players in the game. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Nidha Sharma and I Don't Chase the News Cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rahil Filippos and I will come to you with one business story, That is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Thursday, the 7th of August. Understand why the Andrew Talok story is so significant. You have to understand who Mira Murati is.

Mira is one of the most powerful people in AI today. She is a brilliant mind with a reputation for being both a visionary and a meticulous engineer. As the former CTO of Open AI, she was a quiet force behind some of the most famous AI products in the world. Think Chad GPT, the image generator Dali, and the new video model SORA. Her team, which included Talog, by the way, was the engine room that built the technology that we all use today. Last year, after a very tough period at Open AI, Mira made a bold move. That period was the famous November 23 board crisis. It was a fundamental drift over the pace of AI development versus safety and ethics.

While Mira was appointed interim CEO of, After the board ousted Sam Altman, her action showed a clear disagreement with Altman's management style and his push for rapid commercialization. Murati and others had raised concerns with the board about Altman's lack of transparency and his handling of the company's safety processes. This core disagreement between an iterative safety first approach and a moof-fast mindset made it clear that their visions were at odds. So she left. and she founded her own startup called Thinking Machines Lab. It is a public benefit corporation that is focused on building AI systems that are more open, understandable and customizable. Her mission is to put control of AI back into the hands of a broader community and not just a few powerful companies.

And she brought Talok with her. So it is no surprise that a company like Meta would see this team as a threat. and as a huge opportunity. The company has made no secret of its ambition to compete with Open AI. A Bloomberg report from earlier this year revealed that Meta was offering AI researchers from Open AI, Google Deep Mind and Anthropic compensation packages between $5 million to $20 million per year just to jump ship. They have been trying to buy their way to the top.

We are in an unprecedented era of superstar contracts. Besides the billion dollar offer to Talok, other deals include that of Rooming Pang. Meta reportedly poached this top Apple AI engineer with a stunning package exceeding $200 million. Then there is a case of Matt D.K. Mehta's offer to this 24-year-old researcher was a four-year compensation package worth approximately $250 million in stock and cash. So why would a brilliant mind like Andrew Talok, or Anthropic founder, Dario Amode, say no to life-changing wealth. Stay tuned to find out.

It is the anti-scale mindset, which is a powerful and growing rebellion against the way that big tech operates. And the core of this philosophy is quite simple. Small is better. For top AI talent, the decision to choose a startup over a tech giant often comes down to three main desires. Creative freedom, a hunger for speed and speed. intangible impact and a powerful belief in mission over profit. Instead of being stifled by bureaucracy,

these innovators thrive on autonomy to pursue bold, unconventional ideas. They are drawn to a startup's nimble pace. A project that takes months to green light at a tech giant can be built and launched in weeks at a startup. For these innovators, seeing their work come to life quickly and having a direct tangible impact is more rewarding than any bonus check. And ultimately, they are driven by a moral compass. They are tired of seeing their work being used for ad targeting or to boost quarterly earnings. They want to build systems that are safe, ethical and transparent. And that is a difficult thing to do in a corporate environment where profitability is the ultimate metric. What is going down between thinking machines and meta is the perfect example of this debate.

Who gets to decide the future of this technology and what happens if that power is concentrated in just a few hands? The dangers of a monopolistic AI landscape are not theoretical. They are already here. Reports from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey reveal that a handful of companies control most of the AI infrastructure and data, and that creates massive barriers for anyone else to compete. When the power to build AI rests just with a few companies, we lose more than just competition. It stifles innovation, replacing a diverse ecosystem of ideas with just a few dominant one-size-fits-all platforms. Also, it allows these companies to set their own ethical and safety standards.

They often prioritize profit over public good. And when things go inevitably wrong, like what happened with Amazon's biased hiring tool or with the Dutch childcare fraud scandal, there is little accountability. And the ultimate danger of all of this is regulatory capture. That is where these companies, powerful companies, become so influential that they can write the very rules that are meant to govern them. And it creates a monopoly not just of a market, but of the entire future of AI. And this is why the choice of people like Andrew Talak and Mira Murati are so crucial.

They are fighting for a decentralized, more transparent and more accountable AI ecosystem. They believe that the more powerful technology humanity has ever created should not be owned by a handful of corporations. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and and podcast extras. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button

on top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted by Snikda Sharma and edited by Rajiv Siyah.