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CNN
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to be the first person his company has reached what is known as artificial tension. This is generally thought to mean AI that is superior to all human beings in all knowledge tasks.
This is a vague and perhaps distant concept that some analysts say they may not immediately benefit the company's core business. But Zuckerberg is firing large sums of money to build an all-star team of researchers and engineers to beat Openai and other rivals.
Zuckerberg's recruiting Spree has reportedly included a multi-million-dollar wage package to separate top talent from key rivals, and has launched a talent race within the AI industry. Last month, Openai CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta was offering employees a switch company to a $100 million signature bonus. And this week Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked in a revenue call about his company's status at AI Talent War.
Zuckerberg's interests are high. After Meta's pivot to Meta fell flat, he reoriented the company around AI in the hopes of becoming the leader in the next wave of transformational technology. The company invests billions of dollars in data centers and chips to drive AI ambitions that are now under pressure on delivery. Unlike other tech giants, Meta has a cloud computing business that generates immediate revenue from these infrastructure investments. And the company is coming from a bit behind its competitors after it was reported that it released the largest version of its new Llama 4 AI model.
“That's the Lama 4 lesson. You can have hundreds of thousands of (GPU chips), but it's fine if the right team isn't developing the model,” said Da Davidson analyst Gil Luria.
But more than anything, Zuckerberg appears to be in the circle of Silicon Valley “AI Maximalists,” which believes technology will change everything about our lives and work. Being a leader in this space is essential for Meta and other companies that follow that mindset, Luria said.
“Because of our super-intelligence efforts, I'm focused on building the most elite and talented teams in the industry,” Zuckerberg said in a thread post earlier this month.
Last month, Meta invested $14.3 billion in data labeling startup scale AI. Scale's founder, and later Alexandr Wang joined the social media giant as part of the deal, along with some of the other top employees of Scale. Wang is currently leading the new Meta Superintelligence Labs team along with former Github CEO Nat Friedman.
“My job is to create amazing AI products that billions of people love to use,” Friedman said in an X post earlier this month. “It won't happen overnight, but a few days later, I'm sure there's something great going on ahead.”
On Friday, Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, one of the co-creators of ChatGpt, which Meta hired from Openai a few weeks ago, will become the lead scientist at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zhao “sets a research question and a scientific orientation” for the team, Zuckerberg said. (Meta's existing chief scientist, Yang Lekun, has been with the company for over a decade, but remains in his position as heading the company's basic AI research team, the spokesman confirmed.
Over the past few weeks, Meta has attracted top researchers and engineers from Apple, Google and Anthropic. Several news outlets, including Bloomberg, Wired and The Verge, report that Meta may offer wage packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars for new AI jobs. This is a sign that Zuckerberg is willing to move on to his quest to win the AI Superintelligence race, but Metachief has pushed back some of his reports on reward numbers.
Its mission is that new teams in Meta are working to build super intelligence. This is some of the most notable recent recruitments for teams. This list is compiled based on official statements, social media profiles and posts, and may not be exhaustive. Meta declined to comment on the story.
Zuckerberg's willingness to advance AI may be rooted in part in his desire to own a basic platform for the next wave of key technology.
Meta lost the race to control the operating system of mobile Web Era in the 2000s and early 2010s that Apple and Google acquired. In recent years, he has not been embarrassed to pay App Store operators and express his dissatisfaction with complying with the policy.
Meta recently partnered with Amazon Web Services with a program that supports startups who want to build on the Lama AI model to make its technology essential for businesses emerging during AI Boom.
AI has benefited Meta's core advertising business, but some analysts have questioned how Zuckerberg's “Superintelligence” quest would benefit the company.
Minda Smiley, senior analyst at Emarketer, said during the company's revenue call next week, the meta-executive hopes will face tough questions about how its close ambitions “align with the company's broader business roadmap.”
“Attempts to compete directly with something like Openai have proven to be more challenging for the company, with billions of dollars,” Smiley says.
But as its core business continues to grow rapidly, Meta has the money to build teams and spend “stealing” from rivals, said Angiro, a research analyst at CFRA. And for now, at least, investors seem to be here for that — the company's shares have risen about 20% since its launch this year.
And if Zuckerberg succeeds with his vision, it can drive the meta far beyond social media companies.
“I think Mark is at the fate of his career manifesto,” said Zack Kass, an AI consultant and former Openai acquisition market leader. “He wants to point out Facebook groups as being connected to the world all the time, and if he can build the urgency to cure cancer, he doesn't need to talk about Facebook groups as a lasting legacy like his.”
