Meta deepens AI push with 'Superintelligence' lab, source says
June 30 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O), opens new tab CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reorganized the company's artificial intelligence efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a source on Monday.
The division will be headed by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. He will be the chief AI officer of the new initiative at the social media giant, the source said.
The high-stakes push follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta's latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed rivals including Google, OpenAI and China's DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race.
Zuckerberg hopes the new lab will fast-track work on artificial general intelligence - machines that can outthink humans - and help create new cash flows from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools and smart glasses.
Over the past month, Zuckerberg personally led an aggressive talent raid, floating offers for startups including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence (SSI) and courting prospects directly on WhatsApp with million-dollar pay packages.
Earlier this month, the Facebook and Instagram parent invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI.
Apart from Wang and some Scale AI staff, the new division will reportedly include SSI's co-founder and CEO, Daniel Gross.
Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman will co-lead the Superintelligence Labs with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research, according to the source.
Zuckerberg has also brought on 11 new hires in the AI field, including researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the source said.
The new appointments include former DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun; several OpenAI alumni such as Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Shengjia Zhao and Hongyu Ren; as well as Anthropic's Joel Pobar, who previously spent more than a decade at Meta, according to the source.
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them.
But some analysts worry that Meta's AGI bet could be another moonshot to yield near-term returns. Its other big bet, the Reality Labs unit, has burned through more than $60 billion since 2020, with little to show beyond the Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets.
Together, big tech companies are expected to spend $320 billion on AI this year.
In 2024, Microsoft spent $650 million to scoop up most of Inflection AI's staff, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, while Amazon poached key talent from Adept.
Yet the finish line for AGI remains elusive: Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has said current methods will not be enough to reach the holy grail of the technology, while SoftBank's Masayoshi Son pegs the breakthrough within a decade.
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