An IIT Bombay graduate has captured social media attention after declining a lucrative corporate offer to pursue entrepreneurship in artificial intelligence. According to reports from X, Rishabh Agarwal, who achieved an All India Rank (AIR) of 33 in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, was offered a position by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally. The viral post claimed that Agarwal declined the $1 million annual compensation offer to focus on building his own AI company. However, Agarwal has since clarified that 'Meta's offer was an order of magnitude higher than $1 million' without revealing the exact amount of the compensation package.
Agarwal's career trajectory in artificial intelligence research has been exceptional, as reported by X. He has held positions at some of the world's most prestigious AI institutions, including Google Brain, DeepMind, Waymo, and Meta Superintelligence Labs. His career took him through some of AI's most prominent labs: a year with Geoffrey Hinton's team at Google Brain in Toronto, several years at Google DeepMind working on reinforcement learning and large language models, and a research stint at Waymo. In April 2025, Meta hired him into its newly formed Superintelligence Labs with a reported $1 million package, part of Zuckerberg's aggressive push to recruit top AI talent away from rivals like Google and OpenAI. However, Agarwal's stint at Meta was short-lived, as he announced his exit after only five months in August 2025, writing on X that it was a 'tough decision' given the talent and computing resources available there, but that after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, he felt pulled toward 'a different kind of risk.'
According to the viral post, Agarwal is currently serving as a co-founder of Periodic Labs, an AI company specializing in cutting-edge technologies. As reported by X, the company focuses on developing next-generation AI solutions, with its goal being to create what its founders call an 'AI scientist': systems that combine large AI models with robotic, self-driving laboratories capable of running physical experiments, collecting real-world data, and iterating automatically. The company's first target is discovering new superconducting materials, with broader ambitions in materials science for industries like hardware manufacturing and aerospace. When Meta later tried to bring him back with a far larger offer, Agarwal turned it down a second time.
Periodic Labs has achieved remarkable success in the AI startup ecosystem, launching in September 2025 with a $300 million seed round at a $1.3 billion valuation, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. According to X, the company has since climbed to roughly $7.5 billion in a later funding round, demonstrating exceptional growth momentum. The startup has also successfully recruited more than 20 researchers from Meta, OpenAI, and DeepMind, several of whom reportedly walked away from substantial equity packages to join Agarwal's venture. Agarwal's story reflects a wider pattern playing out across the AI industry, where top researchers are increasingly choosing scientific ambition and equity in early-stage startups over massive guaranteed compensation at Big Tech firms.
