As Meta seeks to compete with the likes of Google and OpenAI, it has been on a recruitment spree for AI leaders for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been on somewhat of a spending spree when it comes to top AI talent in recent months and on Monday (30 June) it became clear why.
In an internal Meta memo seen by CNBC, Zuckerberg laid out its plans for a new division – the Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), and flagged that the new division would be led by recent recruits, including former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.
“As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Zuckerberg said in the memo.
“I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way. Today I want to share some details about how we’re organising our AI efforts to build towards our vision: personal superintelligence for everyone.
“We’re going to call our overall organisation Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). This includes all of our foundations, product and FAIR teams, as well as a new lab focused on developing the next generation of our models.”
Now, as had been widely mooted, he has added Daniel Gross to his ‘super team’.
Gross was CEO and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI) with Ilya Sutskever, the latter a former chief scientist at OpenAI.
CNBC had reported that Meta initially tried to acquire the company but, having been rebuffed, it now planned to pursue its CEO Gross.
Last night, Gross reposted a post from Sutskever on X (formerly Twitter) confirming that, “Daniel Gross’s time with us has been winding down, and as of June 29 he is officially no longer a part of SSI”.
In a recent Uncapped podcast interview with his brother Jack Altman, OpenAI’s Sam Altman claimed Meta had been trying to poach some of his employees with signing bonuses that went as high as $100m. “So far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said, and added a little dig. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”
Meta is widely seen as having fallen well behind its AI competitors, but as he mops up some of Silicon Valley’s leading AI talent, it is clear that Zuckerberg has no intention of letting this continue.
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