Finally, the outcomes of Meta’s full-scale hiring drive to develop advanced kinds of artificial intelligence are starting to take shape. In an internal document initially seen by Bloomberg, the Mark Zuckerberg-led business announced that a new team will be called Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). The team is loaded with talent that has been stolen from leading rivals like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, much to the annoyance of Meta’s rivals.
“As the pace of A.I. progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” said Zuckerberg in the memo, referencing a form of A.I. that boasts capabilities superior to humans. “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.”
Unimpressed with Meta’s sluggish AI advancements, Zuckerberg has personally led a vigorous hiring drive in recent months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, disclosed in a June podcast interview that Meta is providing signing incentives of up to $100 million in an attempt to entice people away from OpenAI.
The MSL team will be led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, who will also be Meta’s new chief artificial intelligence officer. After Meta invested over $14 billion in Scale AI, a company that specializes in labeling data for artificial intelligence (AI) systems, the 28-year-old just joined Zuckerberg’s efforts. In a post on X yesterday (June 30), Wang stated that he and former Github CEO Nat Friedman will co-lead the new group. The article also provided a list of other new team members.
“Towards superintelligence,” noted Wang, who said he’s “thrilled to be accompanied by an incredible group of people.”
Joel Pobar of Anthropic, Johan Schalkwyk of Sesame AI, and Jack Rae and Pei Sun, former Google DeepMind researchers, will be part of the division. Daniel Gross, Friedman’s investing partner and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence, is one prominent person missing from Wang’s list of appointments. According to the media, he is also anticipated to join Meta’s future A.I. initiatives.
The new division will feature several high-profile hires, including former Google DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun, Anthropic’s Joel Pobar, and Sesame AI’s Johan Schalkwyk. However, one expected name is notably missing—Daniel Gross, co-founder of Safe Superintelligence and an investment partner of Friedman. While his name wasn’t included in the official list shared by Wang, reports from CNBC suggest Gross is still expected to join Meta’s new AI initiative.
The majority of Meta’s latest recruits come from OpenAI. This includes researchers like Ji Lin, Hongyu Ren, and Jiahui Yu, all of whom contributed to major projects such as o3 and GPT-4o. The team will also include Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of ChatGPT, and Trapit Bansal, a leading expert in reinforcement learning. Additional key hires are Suchao Bi and Huiwen Chang, who played instrumental roles in developing GPT-4o’s voice mode and image generation features.
Curiously, the list does not include Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai—three former OpenAI employees who had previously announced they were joining Meta. According to an X post by Beyer, their absence is due to “some technicalities.” He also clarified that the trio, who were instrumental in launching OpenAI’s Zurich office, did not receive the $100 million signing bonuses referenced by Sam Altman, and they will not be reporting directly to Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is reassessing its compensation structure in an effort to retain top talent. As reported by Wired, Sam Altman has sought to reassure employees that Meta’s aggressive hiring efforts have yet to lure away the company’s most vital researchers.
“Meta is acting in a way that feels somewhat distasteful, I assume things will get even crazier in the future,” the OpenAI chief reportedly told employees via Slack. “Meta has gotten a few great people for sure, but on the whole, it is hard to overstate how much they didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list.”
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