Meta CEO leads secretive AI recruitment, plans multibillion-dollar Scale AI investment to outpace rivals
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is assembling a top team of AI experts to develop "superintelligence," a type of AI that outperforms human capabilities.Dissatisfied with Meta's AI progress, Zuckerberg had invited AI researchers to his Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto homes as part of efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), the concept of machines matching human-level performance across a wide range of tasks, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.According to the report, Zuckerberg is prioritizing the recruitment of the secretive "superintelligence" team, with the goal of Meta leading and outperforming other tech firms in the race for AGI.
Zuckerberg plans to personally recruit nearly 50 people for the new team, including a head of AI research, and has rearranged desks at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters so the team can work close to him.
He is also building a new team while planning a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI, a company that specializes in data services and custom AI applications.Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, is expected to join the superintelligence group once the deal is finalized, marking Meta's largest external investment to date, according to Bloomberg.Meta recently launched a free standalone AI app powered by its Llama 4 model, promoting it as a more cost-effective alternative to competitors such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Gemini, despite initial setbacks.
While Meta has integrated AI tools across Facebook, WhatsApp, Ray-Ban glasses, and chatbots, it continues to lag behind OpenAI's ChatGPT in the competitive AI landscape.
