Latest news with #AlexandrWang
Business Insider
8 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Meta Platforms (META) Considers Using Rival AI Models Instead of Llama
Tech giant Meta Platforms (META) is reportedly thinking about pulling back from its own Llama language models in favor of models from rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to The New York Times. This would be a big shift in strategy, since Meta's Llama models are open-source, meaning others can use and modify them, while OpenAI and Anthropic use 'closed' models that aren't open to the public. So far, no final decision has been made. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter This possible change comes after the rocky launch of Meta's Llama 4 models in April. Indeed, Meta introduced the models during its LlamaCon event, but they didn't perform as well as competing AI models, and many developers left the event unimpressed. Since then, Meta has been spending heavily to catch up. Earlier this month, it announced a $14.3 billion investment to buy nearly half of Scale AI. As part of that deal, Scale's CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta to lead its 'superintelligence' team, which is focused on creating artificial general intelligence. Meta is also making bold moves to attract top AI talent. Reports say that the company is offering massive signing bonuses—up to $100 million—to hire researchers from OpenAI. On top of that, Meta is in talks to buy PlayAI, which is a startup that creates realistic AI voices. The company had even looked into acquiring other AI firms like Perplexity AI, Runway AI, and FuriosaAI before choosing to invest in Scale. Altogether, these efforts show how serious Meta is about becoming a leader in the AI space under CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Is Meta a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on META stock based on 42 Buys, three Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average META price target of $716.48 per share implies that shares are near fair value.
Business Insider
21 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Why Mark Zuckerberg is making a $14 billion bet on an AI startup
Charles Rollet is a rockstar tech reporter who recently joined Business Insider. He's knocked out several scoops about Scale AI lately. This is the startup that Meta is investing in. Founder Alexandr Wang is also joining Meta. If you want to understand what Mark Zuckerberg is buying, Charles's coverage is a must-read. He broke news on how Google used Scale AI to chase ChatGPT and led exclusive reporting on how big Scale AI customers are deserting the startup. There's also an astounding story on how Scale AI left sensitive data about Google, xAI, and Meta open for anyone on the web to see. I asked Charles what he thought of this peculiar deal. Why is Zuck paying so much? If you want a cutting-edge AI model, one way to do that is by having humans rewrite millions of chatbot responses and do lots of other little tricks to painstakingly improve each AI answer. Our reporting shows that Scale AI specializes in this kind of work: it's what Scale AI did to help Google catch up with ChatGPT, for example. This kind of expertise is valuable for Zuck as he seeks to release new models that blow everyone away. The lukewarm reception to Llama 4 clearly got to him, and he's taking aggressive action. What's the future of Scale AI now, and how can it help Meta and Zuck's AI ambitions? Or is this just a massive acquihire of Alexandr Wang? It was stunning to see Google pull Scale AI projects hours after the Meta investment was announced. It's an open question whether Scale AI can regain that kind of lost revenue. But I don't think Meta will just let Scale AI peter out and die. Meta now has much more direct access to Scale AI for training its latest models. Zuck needs Llama models to be at, or very near, the top of AI benchmarks. And Scale AI has a good idea of what works and what doesn't, along with the platform to make things happen. This deal wasn't solely about hiring Wang — no offense to Alex, but there were probably cheaper ways to do that. What has your Scale AI reporting revealed about how AI models are developed? Training AI models requires a ton of human labor. A key way to improve models is through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, or RLHF. Scale AI's biggest platform, Remotasks, has more than 240,000 human contributors doing this stuff. Ironically, automation is something of a problem here: It turns out that these humans often prefer to copy and paste answers from ChatGPT instead of giving genuine human feedback. We noticed many examples of humans being banned from Scale AI's platforms for doing this. What else should BI readers know about this situation? Zuck made a huge bet with Scale AI. People have been comparing this to the Metaverse, which burned billions and hasn't panned out yet. But if Meta starts to climb AI rankings and gets Llama models performing much better, this could be seen as a wise move — closer to Facebook buying Instagram.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Zuckerberg Just Stole OpenAI's Stars--And He's Building a $65B AI War Machine
Meta (NASDAQ:META) just fired a warning shot in Silicon Valley's AI war. After the underwhelming launch of its latest AI model, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting bigagain. This time, it's personal. He's hired three key OpenAI researchersLucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhaiwho helped build OpenAI's Zurich lab and previously worked at Google DeepMind. The trio's exit is a rare public crack in OpenAI's defenses, and Zuckerberg's offersreportedly up to $100 million per recruitmake it clear he's playing to win. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 6 Warning Sign with META. And he's not stopping there. Meta recently poured $14 billion into Scale AI and brought its CEO, Alexandr Wang, on board to spearhead a new superintelligence team. While OpenAI's Sam Altman publicly shrugged off the defectionscalling Zuckerberg's moves insane with a smirkthe pressure is mounting. Meta's biggest model rollout was delayed, prompting a full-blown recruiting blitz that even targeted OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman. They passed, but the message was sent: Meta wants the best minds, and it's willing to outspend anyone to get them. Zuckerberg's ambitions are backed by serious capital. Meta plans to spend up to $65 billion this yearmuch of it aimed directly at AI infrastructure. His future vision? AI assistants that build your ads, talk like your friends, and replace customer service reps with digital clones. With Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all racing toward the same prizehuman-level intelligenceZuckerberg's aggressive push could reshape the competitive hierarchy. Meta might've stumbled out of the gate, but with this team, this cash, and this firepower, it just might catch up faster than anyone expects. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Zuckerberg Just Stole OpenAI's Stars--And He's Building a $65B AI War Machine
Meta (NASDAQ:META) just fired a warning shot in Silicon Valley's AI war. After the underwhelming launch of its latest AI model, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting bigagain. This time, it's personal. He's hired three key OpenAI researchersLucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhaiwho helped build OpenAI's Zurich lab and previously worked at Google DeepMind. The trio's exit is a rare public crack in OpenAI's defenses, and Zuckerberg's offersreportedly up to $100 million per recruitmake it clear he's playing to win. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 6 Warning Sign with META. And he's not stopping there. Meta recently poured $14 billion into Scale AI and brought its CEO, Alexandr Wang, on board to spearhead a new superintelligence team. While OpenAI's Sam Altman publicly shrugged off the defectionscalling Zuckerberg's moves insane with a smirkthe pressure is mounting. Meta's biggest model rollout was delayed, prompting a full-blown recruiting blitz that even targeted OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman. They passed, but the message was sent: Meta wants the best minds, and it's willing to outspend anyone to get them. Zuckerberg's ambitions are backed by serious capital. Meta plans to spend up to $65 billion this yearmuch of it aimed directly at AI infrastructure. His future vision? AI assistants that build your ads, talk like your friends, and replace customer service reps with digital clones. With Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all racing toward the same prizehuman-level intelligenceZuckerberg's aggressive push could reshape the competitive hierarchy. Meta might've stumbled out of the gate, but with this team, this cash, and this firepower, it just might catch up faster than anyone expects. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
India Today
a day ago
- Business
- India Today
Meta in talks to acquire AI voice startup PlayAI, hires top OpenAI researcher for Superintelligence team
Meta is reportedly in advanced discussions to purchase PlayAI, a Palo Alto startup renowned for its AI-powered voice replication technology, according to a report by Bloomberg. The deal, which has not yet been finalised, is expected to include both PlayAI's proprietary systems and some of its engineering team. This move is part of Meta's broader drive to catch up with rivals like Google and OpenAI in key AI areas. PlayAI describes its technology as being 'responsive as a conversation between two people'. advertisementBy integrating PlayAI's voice technology, Meta could significantly enhance its AI assistant and hands-free hardware such as smart glasses. Meta recently debuted the RayBan Meta glasses in India, and also released new AI smart glasses with Oakley – more suited for active wear. There are reports that Meta is also working with Prada for a luxury fashion line of the AI smart glasses. Earlier this month, the company also invested $14.3billion in ScaleAI and brought its founder, Alexandr Wang, into its new 'superintelligence' is also aggressively recruiting AI talent. It has recently hired three researchers from OpenAI's Zurich officeand brought in experts from Google and Sesame. These hires strengthen the company's superintelligence team alongside Wang. Meta has recently also onboarded Trapit Bansal, who left OpenAI in June. Bansal, formerly a member of technical staff at OpenAI since early 2022, made notable contributions to their reinforcement learning efforts and was instrumental in developing the ChatGPT-o1 reasoning model alongside Ilya to TechCrunch, his arrival at Meta boosts the company's ability to create frontier AI reasoning systems that could rival OpenAI's o3 and other industry-leading models. His move is part of a wider trend: several former OpenAI researchers, including Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, have also joined Meta's Zuckerberg has apparently been deeply involved in this talent acquisition strategy, reportedly offering compensation packages worth up to $100million for top-tier researchers – at least that is what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed in a recent podcast interview. However, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has recently responded to Altman's comments saying that the statement from the OpenAI CEO was 'dishonest' and that he is 'known to exaggerate' things.- Ends
