Meet the IIT-Bombay grad who turned down Meta's $1M job
What's the story
Rishabh Agarwal, a graduate from IIT Bombay and an AI researcher, has turned down a lucrative job offer from Meta. Responding to a viral post on X, Agarwal said that "Meta's offer was an order of magnitude higher than $1 million." Instead of continuing at Meta, Agarwal has chosen to start his own AI venture - Periodic Labs. The start-up aims to speed up scientific discoveries by leveraging artificial intelligence technology.
Career highlights
Agarwal's academic and professional background
Agarwal, who secured an All India Rank (AIR) of 33 in JEE and studied Computer Science at IIT Bombay, has had an illustrious career. He completed his PhD in artificial intelligence from Mila, a Montreal-based AI research institute. He has worked with Google Brain, Google DeepMind, Waymo, and Meta Superintelligence Labs. Agarwal has also been an Adjunct Professor at McGill University.
Research contributions
Research contributions to AI
Agarwal's research primarily focuses on reinforcement learning (RL) and large language models (LLMs). He has been awarded a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award for his work. He has also contributed to Google's Gemma and Gemini AI models. His research has advanced offline reinforcement learning and LLM training techniques, making significant contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.
Career transition
Decision to leave Meta
Agarwal joined Meta Superintelligence Labs in April 2025, where he worked on RL and reasoning for LLMs. However, after five months, he decided to resign. He announced his decision on X by saying it was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence lab especially given the talent and compute density. After 7.5 years at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, Agarwal felt compelled to take on a different kind of risk.
Startup launch
Periodic Labs and its mission
Instead of sticking with a major tech company, Agarwal chose to join Periodic Labs as a founding member. The start-up is developing an AI scientist that can generate hypotheses for real-world scientific experiments. Its aim is to hasten discoveries in fields like new materials, medicines, and even physics. Backed by NVIDIA and Jeff Bezos, Periodic Labs has become one of the closely watched AI start-ups in scientific research.