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Meta Creates Superintelligence Labs, Taps Scale AI Founder to Lead

144 posts • OpenAI (o3)

Published Jul 2, 2025, 08:33 AM

Meta Platforms has consolidated its artificial-intelligence operations into a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, an internal memo shows. The group will be led by Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of data-labeling start-up Scale AI, who becomes Meta’s chief AI officer, alongside former GitHub chief executive Nat Friedman. Their mandate covers foundational model research, product development and Meta’s open-source Llama projects as the company pursues systems capable of “superintelligence.”

The reorganisation follows Meta’s US$14.3 billion purchase of a 49 percent, non-voting stake in Scale AI earlier this month, a deal that values the San Francisco firm at about US$29 billion and ranks as Meta’s second-largest transaction after WhatsApp. Bringing Wang in-house is intended to speed the acquisition of training data and talent as Meta races to narrow the gap with OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google.

Since the Scale agreement, Meta has recruited at least 11 senior researchers from rivals, including several who helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4 models. Industry outlet Wired reported that some candidates received compensation packages worth as much as US$300 million over four years, with first-year pay exceeding US$100 million. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who has claimed Meta dangled US$100 million signing bonuses, told staff the company is “recalibrating” its own pay to stem further departures.

Financing the push is proving costly. The Financial Times reports that Meta is in talks with private-credit investors such as Apollo Global Management and KKR to raise about US$29 billion — roughly US$3 billion in equity and US$26 billion in debt — to build new U.S. data centres dedicated to AI workloads. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has indicated overall AI infrastructure spending could reach as much as US$65 billion this year.

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Sources

reuters.com(14)ft.com(10)bloomberg.com(10)wired.com(9)

Rowan Cheung

@rowancheung

AI NEWS: Sam Altman just sent a fiery Slack message to OpenAI researchers, dismissing Meta's recruiting spree as "distasteful." Plus, more news from Amazon, Cloudflare, Microsoft, X, and Superhuman. Here's everything you need to know:

Chubby♨️

@kimmonismus

Meta's takeover of top scientist seems to hurt OpenAI. Sam Altman now counters. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman slams Meta’s aggressive hiring, calling it a cultural risk. He asserts OpenAI’s mission-driven "missionaries" will prevail over what he frames as Meta’s financial

The Hindu

@the_hindu

Meta poaches top AI talent from OpenAI and DeepMind as Zuckerberg escalates AI push ✍️@johnXavier777

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