The social media giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has reportedly offered OpenAI staff signing bonuses of up to $100 million to lure top talent to its growing “superintelligence” initiative.
The aggressive recruitment campaign has already borne fruit with the hiring of Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai, three researchers who were instrumental in building OpenAI’s European presence from its Zurich office according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The hires are part of a wider strategy by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reinvigorate the company’s AI development efforts, which have so far struggled to match the momentum of rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.
The company’s ambitions are backed by deep pockets, Meta is expected to spend around $65 billion on AI infrastructure and capabilities this year alone.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has taken a public swipe at Meta’s tactics, accusing the company of trying to copy OpenAI’s playbook. Speaking on a recent podcast, Altman confirmed Meta’s aggressive approach, but remained defiant.
“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things,” he said. “So far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
He went on to suggest that attempts to emulate OpenAI’s model would likely fall flat: “I think that there’s a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying ‘we’re just going to try to copy OpenAI’. That basically never works. You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate.”
Meta’s biggest swing so far may be its partnership with Scale AI. The San Francisco-based firm, founded by Alexander Wang, specialises in curating and annotating data for training large-scale AI models. Meta confirmed that Wang would be joining the company to support its most ambitious AI efforts to date.
“We will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexander Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
The move marks one of the largest external investments into AI infrastructure to date. Data labelling, though less high-profile than model development, is essential for building accurate and reliable AI systems, particularly in areas like computer vision and language processing.
Despite these bold moves, Meta faces a steep climb. While its LLaMA family of models has gained attention among developers, Meta has yet to launch a mainstream, consumer-facing product to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Observers say that building a sustainable competitive advantage in AI requires more than capital and talent, it requires cultural alignment, technical leadership, and years of experimentation.
Still, Meta’s renewed focus could pose a serious challenge. The company is creating a dedicated AI research lab focused on “superintelligence,” aiming to build advanced models that integrate seamlessly into its vast platform ecosystem, from AR glasses to smart assistants and ad optimisation.
With its $15 billion Scale AI deal, marquee researcher hires, and eye-watering pay packages, Meta is clearly betting big on AI, doubling down in the hope that it can catch up to and eventually surpass its rivals.
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