Meta’s AGI ambitions intensify as Zuckerberg bets big on scale AI talent
Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, to join the lab. The collaboration is part of a larger deal reportedly in the works, where Meta may invest billions into Scale AI, a data infrastructure firm that powers many leading AI models.
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Meta is making a high-stakes push into the next frontier of artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally leading efforts to build a new “superintelligence” research lab.
In a bold move, Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, to join the lab, according to The New York Times. The collaboration is part of a larger deal reportedly in the works, where Meta may invest billions into Scale AI, a data infrastructure firm that powers many leading AI models. As part of the deal, some Scale AI talent could transition into Meta’s fold.
But Wang isn’t the only high-profile get. Zuckerberg has been quietly but aggressively recruiting AI researchers from OpenAI, Google, and other rivals, hosting them at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto. The mission is to build a lean, elite team of about 50 engineers and scientists who will steer Meta’s AI research into the realm of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the still-elusive benchmark of machines matching or surpassing human-level cognition across domains.
According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg is growing increasingly dissatisfied with Meta’s position in the AI race. Despite Meta AI recently hitting 1 billion monthly active users, the company has not yet made the kind of AGI-level breakthroughs seen from rivals like OpenAI or Anthropic. Internally, this new lab signals a shift in urgency and ambition.
In Zuckerberg’s view, Meta has both the technical chops and the resources to not just catch up but to lead the charge into the era of superintelligence.
