Zuckerberg unveils new ‘superintelligence lab'
The initiative, unveiled on Monday, brings together Meta's core AI research and product teams under one banner, with the stated goal of delivering 'personal superintelligence for everyone.'
Leading the new lab is Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, who joins Meta as Chief AI Officer following the company's reported $14 billion investment in his data-labeling firm. He is joined by Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, and a team of senior AI engineers from OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic.
'As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight. 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,' Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo, describing the move as a historic turning point.
The launch of MSL comes amid growing competition among US tech giants and intensifying rivalry with China. In January, Western tech developers and investors were rocked by the rise of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which claimed its product was superior to OpenAI's ChatGPT in key operational cost metrics.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump unveiled the $500 billion Stargate initiative –a sweeping federal strategy to secure US leadership in superintelligent AI. The program includes incentives for private-sector research, export controls on advanced chips, and direct collaboration between US firms and defense agencies.
Trump's allies described AI as 'the Manhattan Project of our generation,' insisting that the 'future of human civilization' must be led by the United States. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman promised that his company was committed to helping the US government safeguard 'America's lead in AI' for the sake of protecting 'democratic values.'
Meta reportedly seeks to regain ground lost to OpenAI and Google DeepMind in recent years. MSL will integrate the company's existing AI models, including Llama 4.1 and 4.2, into broader research spanning language, vision, speech, and video understanding. The company aims to apply its computing scale –including its massive GPU clusters –to train next-generation AI systems, with Zuckerberg claiming that 'Meta is uniquely positioned to deliver superintelligence to the world.'
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