IIT Bombay graduate says he turned down Meta offer worth 'an order of magnitude higher' than $1 million

When Mark Zuckerberg began assembling his elite AI teams, reports of extraordinary compensation packages quickly became part of the conversation. Engineers and researchers were said to be receiving offers worth millions in a bid to secure the world's best artificial intelligence talent.

One of those researchers was Rishabh Agarwal, an IIT Bombay graduate with an impressive career spanning Google Brain, DeepMind, Waymo and Meta. But rather than being persuaded by an enormous pay cheque, Agarwal chose a different path.

The story resurfaced this week after an X user highlighted his decision to leave Meta just months after joining the company, claiming he had walked away from a package worth around $1 million (more than Rs 8.5 crore).

Agarwal soon weighed in with a correction that made the story even more remarkable.

More from Tech

"Meta's offer was an order of magnitude higher than $1 million," he wrote on X, indicating that the compensation package was substantially larger than the figure circulating online.

While Agarwal did not disclose the exact amount, his comment has reignited discussions around the intense competition for top AI researchers and the staggering salaries companies are willing to offer in the race for artificial general intelligence.

Who is Rishabh Agarwal?

Agarwal's credentials explain why he became one of the industry's most sought-after researchers.

After securing All India Rank (AIR) 33 in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), he completed his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay before pursuing a PhD in artificial intelligence at Mila, the Montreal-based AI research institute. There, he worked under noted AI researchers Aaron Courville and Marc Bellemare.

His professional journey has taken him through some of the biggest organisations in artificial intelligence, including Google Brain, Google DeepMind, Waymo and Meta Superintelligence Labs. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at McGill University.

According to his GitHub profile, Agarwal's work centres on reinforcement learning and large language models. He has received a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award, contributed to Google's Gemma and Gemini models, and published research that has advanced reinforcement learning techniques as well as training methods for large language models.

Choosing risk over security

Despite joining Meta Superintelligence Labs in April 2025, Agarwal's stint at the company lasted only about five months.

Announcing his departure on X, he described the decision as a difficult one.

"This is my last week at @AIatMeta. It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density," he wrote.

He explained that after spending seven-and-a-half years across Google Brain, DeepMind and Meta, he wanted to pursue a different challenge.

"But after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk," he said.

In an ironic twist, Agarwal also referenced advice often shared by Zuckerberg himself while explaining his decision.

"In a world that's changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk," he quoted.

Rather than remaining at one of Silicon Valley's most valuable companies, Agarwal joined Periodic Labs as a founding member.

The startup is developing what it describes as an AI scientist capable of generating hypotheses for real-world scientific experiments, with applications ranging from discovering new materials to accelerating drug development and advancing physics research.

Periodic Labs has reportedly attracted backing from Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, making it one of the emerging startups drawing attention in AI-powered scientific research.

At a time when AI researchers are commanding unprecedented salaries, Agarwal's decision stands out not because of the money he declined, but because of the opportunity he chose instead. His story reflects a growing trend among some of the world's leading AI minds—leaving lucrative corporate roles in pursuit of building the next generation of AI companies.