Andrew Tulloch education qualifications: Sydney University medal winner and Cambridge top graduate who turned down Meta's $1.5 billion offer

Few tales move quicker in Silicon Valley than the one about a billionaire offer and someone who is silly enough to say no. Such is what went down when Andrew Tulloch, a humble but highly rated Australian computer scientist, rejected an offer from Meta, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company, an offer of as much as $1.5 billion over six years, reports the Wall Street Journal.

But Tulloch's choice was not surprising. It was bolstered by a career of intellectual scholarship, globally leading research, and an education that is the model for AI supremacy. From charting Australia's best school marks to leading the leaderboards at Cambridge, Tulloch's career is one of sustained excellence and deliberate decision. 

By this point, Tulloch had established himself as one of Australia's finest young minds.

Making maths master at Cambridge

Incentivized by a thirst for greater theoretical learning, Tulloch traveled around the world to attend Cambridge University, applying to the extremely competitive Part III of the Mathematical Tripos, commonly accepted as the toughest global postgraduate mathematics course.

At Trinity College, Tulloch received his Master of Mathematical Statistics in statistics and machine learning. 

This blend of natural intelligence, mathematical accuracy, and global training were the precursors to his next AI contribution.

Beyond the written word: Goldman Sachs to OpenAI

Tulloch's career followed as neatly as his studies: driven, goal-focused, and aimed. After a brief stint as a strategist at Goldman Sachs, where he employed quantitative modelling to simulate financial markets, he joined employee ranks at Meta (then Facebook) in 2012.

There, over a period of more than a decade, Tulloch helped build the AI foundations that support Meta's products with key contributions to PyTorch, now one of the most widely used machine learning frameworks globally.

In 2023, Tulloch joined OpenAI, where he contributed to the creation of GPT‑4, GPT‑4o, and other forward-looking reason systems. A year or so down the line, in 2025, he co-founded Thinking Machines Lab with former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati: a firm that aims to create transparent, customisable, and secure AI at scale.

When $1.5 billion isn't enough

It wasn't long before Thinking Machines Lab opened that Meta came knocking—in this case, in the form of a aggressive effort to hire Tulloch and his team. WSJ reports that Tulloch was offered an incentive package worth potentially as much as $1.5 billion over six years. That included stock options, bonuses, and long-term incentives.

But Tulloch did not accept. In fact, none of his team members agreed to work at Meta.

Why? To Tulloch, it was always about more than money. The opportunity to create something with meaning, something that he believed would help him achieve his vision of responsible AI, was more important than a billion-dollar check.

Lessons from a billion-dollar rejection

Andrew Tulloch's academic life, ranging from a flawless TER score to leading Cambridge's most rigorous program of mathematics, is not one of prodigal genius. It is one of discipline, curiosity, and looking to the long term.

In a time that is so cut-obsessed, Tulloch's story teaches us that solid foundations in education still count more than ever before. He reminds us that sometimes it is not the largest thing that determines your destiny, but the largest purpose.