Pondering Machines co-founder heads to Meta

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Leaving a $12B startup you founded right after shipping its first product (and after already rejecting a rumored $1.5B offer) means the counter should be absolutely insane.

Mark Zuckerberg’s successful poaching of Mira Murati’s Pondering Machines Lab co-founder just showed Meta’s ‘hiring freeze’ thaws in a short time relating to the highest AI talent.

Want to hitch The Rundown? We’re trying to fill seven latest positions, and are offering a $2000 referral bonus for full-time hires. View the openings here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Pondering Machines Lab co-founder joins Meta

• xAI’s world models for video game generation

• Connect Agent Builder to eight,000+ tools

• OpenAI’s GPT-5 reduces political bias by 30%

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

TALENT WARS

👀 Pondering Machines Lab co-founder joins Meta

The Rundown: Andrew Tulloch, the co-founder of Mira Murati’s Pondering Machine Lab, just departed the AI startup to rejoin Meta, based on the Wall Street Journal, marking one other major talent acquisition for Mark Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence Lab.

The main points:

• Tulloch spent 11 years at Meta before joining OpenAI, and reportedly confirmed his exit in an internal message citing personal reasons for the move.

• The researcher helped launch Pondering Machines alongside former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati in February, raising $2B and constructing a 30-person team.

• Meta reportedly pursued Tulloch this summer with a compensation package as high as $1.5B over 6 years, though the tech giant disputed the numbers.

• The hiring comes as Meta continues to reorganize AI teams under its MSL division, while planning as much as $72B in infrastructure spending this yr.

Why it matters: TML recently released its first product, and on condition that Tulloch had already reportedly turned down an enormous offer, the timing of this move is interesting. Meta’s internal shakeup hasn’t been without growing pains, but an enormous infusion of talent, coupled with its compute, makes its next model a hotly anticipated release.

TOGETHER WITH NEBIUS

📶 Why AI teams are switching from hyperscalers to Nebius

The Rundown: Hyperscalers promise AI-ready infrastructure, but deliver generic cloud with GPU bolt-ons. Nebius designed their platform from the bottom up for machine learning workloads, with the performance guarantees and developer experience that AI engineers really need.

By switching to Nebius, you receive:

• 3 months free service plus zero-cost data migration out of your current provider

• Supercomputer performance with cloud-like flexibility and familiar tooling

• Solution architects who guide you thru every step of the transition

Learn more & switch today.

XAI

🎮 xAI’s world models for video game generation

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s xAI reportedly recruited Nvidia specialists to develop world models that may generate interactive 3D gaming environments, targeting a playable AI-created game release before 2026.

The main points:

• xAI hired Nvidia researchers Zeeshan Patel and Ethan He this summer to guide the event of AI that understands physics and object interactions.

• The corporate is recruiting for positions to hitch its “omni team”, and in addition recently posted a ‘video games tutor’ opening to coach Grok on game design.

• Musk posted that xAI will release a “great AI-generated game before the tip of next yr,” also previously indicating the goal could be a AAA quality title.

Why it matters: World models have been all the craze this yr, and it’s no surprise to see xAI taking that route, given Musk’s affinity for gaming and desire for an AI studio. We’ve seen models like Genie 3 break latest ground in playable environments — but intuitive game logic and control are still needed for a zero-to-one gaming moment.

AI TRAINING

🔌 Connect Agent Builder to eight,000+ tools

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn how one can connect OpenAI’s Agent Builder to over 8,000 apps using Zapier MCP, enabling you to construct powerful automations like creating Google Forms directly through AI agents.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to platform.openai.com/agent-builder, click Create, and configure your agent with instructions like: “You might be a helpful assistant that helps me create a Google Form to collect feedback on our weekly workshops.” Then select MCP Server → Third-Party Servers → Zapier

2. Visit mcp.zapier.com/mcpservers, click “Latest MCP Server,” select OpenAI because the client, name your server, and add apps needed (like Google Forms)

3. Copy your OpenAI Secret API Key from Zapier MCP’s Connect section and paste it into Agent Builder’s connection field, then click Connect and choose “No Approval Required”

4. Confirm your OpenAI organization, then click Preview and test with: “Create a Google Form with three questions to collect feedback on our weekly university workshops.” Once confirmed working, click Publish and name your automation

Pro tip: Experiment with different Zapier tools to expand your automation capabilities. Each latest integration adds potential for custom workflows and more advanced tasks.

PRESENTED BY ATLASSIAN

🎯 What the 4% of AI-successful corporations do in a different way

The Rundown: AI usage has doubled previously yr, and employees report being 33% more productive. So why have not isolated productivity gains translated to company-wide transformation?

Atlassian’s AI Collaboration Index reveals:

• Most teams remain buried in tasks and disconnected across applications

• Personal efficiency is up, but AI hasn’t solved the team-wide collaboration problem

• Winners are focused on company-wide systems for AI coordination, not individual tools

Download the AI Collaboration Index to learn what sets top performers apart.

AI RESEARCH

📊 OpenAI’s GPT-5 reduces political bias by 30%

The Rundown: OpenAI just released latest research showing that its GPT-5 models exhibit 30% lower political bias than previous models, based on tests using 500 prompts across politically charged topics and conversations.

The main points:

• Researchers tested models with prompts starting from “liberal charged” to “conservative charged” across 100 topics, grading responses on 5 bias metrics.

• GPT-5 performed best with emotionally loaded questions, though strongly liberal prompts triggered more bias than conservative ones across all models.

• OpenAI estimated that fewer than 0.01% of actual ChatGPT conversations display political bias, based on applying the evaluation to real user traffic.

• OAI found three primary bias patterns: models stating political opinions as their very own, emphasizing single perspectives, or amplifying users’ emotional framing.

Why it matters: With thousands and thousands consulting ChatGPT and other models, even subtle biases can compound into a serious influence over world views. OAI’s evaluation shows progress, but bias in response to strong political prompts looks like the precise moment when someone is vulnerable to having their perspectives shaped or reinforced.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🎥 Sora 2 – OpenAI’s SOTA video model, now available via API

• ⚙️ Claude Code – Anthropic’s AI coding assistant

• 💼 Gemini Enterprise – Discover, create, share, and run AI agents

• 📱 Apps SDK – Chat with and construct apps directly in ChatGPT

📰 All the pieces else in AI today

Atlassian announced the GA of Rovo Dev. The context-aware AI agent supports skilled devs across the SDLC, from code gen and review to docs and maintenance. Explore now.*

OpenAI served subpoenas to Encode and The Midas Project, demanding communications about California’s AI law SB 53, with recipients calling it intimidation.

Apple is reportedly nearing an acquisition of computer vision startup Prompt AI, with the 11-person team and tech set to be incorporated into its smart home division.

Several models achieved gold medal performance on the International Olympiad on Astronomy & Astrophysics, with GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 receiving top marks.

Mark Cuban opened up his Cameo to public use on Sora, using the platform as a tool to advertise his Cost Plus Drugs company by requiring each output to feature the brand.

Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak joined Microsoft and Anthropic as a part-time advisor, where he’ll provide “strategic perspectives on geopolitical trends”.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader John C. in Seattle, WA:

“I’m a first-time founder constructing a product for restaurants. I…desired to feel like I used to be working with a business partner. I built a custom GPT with the persona of Steve Jobs (my idol), who’s a veteran food industry exec instructed to share advice. The responses I get are informed, no-BS, and sprinkle in delightful quotes from Jobs and fictional but relevant anecdotes from previous food industry experience.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Google’s latest AI enterprise play

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Sora clones flood app store

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Figure drops latest humanoid

• Today’s AI tool guide: Connect Agent Builder to tools with Zapier MCP

• RSVP to next workshop @ 1PM EST Friday: Construct agent teams in Zapier

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown