Meta’s Superintelligence division is building a dedicated hardware team and hiring veteran engineers to lead it as the company further develops AI-powered devices.
Meta is already known for its smart glasses and virtual reality headsets produced by its Reality Labs division. This new effort is part of Meta Superintelligence Lab (MSL), a high-profile AI division announced last year, and suggests Meta is considering other types of AI devices.
The initiative has not yet been reported, but sources say some Reality Labs engineers have moved to MSL and are prototyping the AI division’s software on Reality Labs hardware, and the two divisions are working closely together.
The tech giant plans to hire Rui Xu, who previously led hardware at AI agent startup Dreamer, which founding team Meta acquired last month, to lead MSL’s hardware, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Before joining Dreamer, Xu was chief operating officer of K-Scale, a robotics startup that went out of business last year, The Information reported. Nat Friedman, head of product and applied research at MSL, invested in K-Scale through an AI grant program he co-founded.
According to LinkedIn, Xu previously worked on smart device development at TikTok owner ByteDance, where he led a research lab that shipped millions of units in China. He also has management experience at smartphone maker Xiaomi, laptop maker Lenovo and internet giant Tencent.
Mehta declined to comment. Mr. Xu did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Tech giants like OpenAI are racing to create AI-native personal devices that are more than just smartphones.
MSL head Alexandr Wang said in a podcast appearance in February that Meta wants to expand beyond mobile phones into a world where everyone has a personalized AI agent residing in a “swarm” of devices.
“You want your personal agent to be with you all the time in different ways and see what you see and hear what you hear,” Wang said on the podcast.
“You’re going to see incredible velocity coming from us over the next few months,” he added.
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