New York
\n CNN
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\n Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission for his company to be the first to reach so-called artificial superintelligence<\/a> \u2014 generally considered to mean AI that\u2019s better than all humans at all knowledge work.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s a nebulous and likely far-out concept that some analysts say may not immediately benefit the company\u2019s core business. Yet Zuckerberg is shelling out huge sums to build an all-star team of researchers and engineers to beat OpenAI and other rivals to it.\n <\/p>\n \n Zuckerberg\u2019s recruiting spree, which has reportedly included multimillion-dollar pay packages to lure top talent away from key rivals, has kicked off a talent race within the AI industry. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed<\/a> Meta was offering his employees $100 million signing bonuses to switch companies. And just this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked during an earnings call about his company\u2019s status in the AI talent war, a sign that Wall Street is now also invested in the competition.\n <\/p>\n \n The stakes are high for Zuckerberg \u2014 after Meta\u2019s pivot to the metaverse fell flat, he\u2019s reoriented the company around AI in hopes of being a leader in the next transformational technology wave. The company has invested billions in data centers and chips to power its AI ambitions that it\u2019s now under pressure to deliver on. Unlike other tech giants, Meta doesn\u2019t have a cloud computing business to generate immediate revenue from those infrastructure investments. And the company is coming from somewhat behind competitors, after reported<\/a> delays<\/a> in releasing the largest version of its new Llama 4 AI model.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThat\u2019s the Llama 4 lesson: You can have hundreds of thousands of (GPU chips), but if you don\u2019t have the right team developing the model, it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria.\n <\/p>\n \n But more than anything, Zuckerberg appears to be in a circle of Silicon Valley \u201cAI maximalists\u201d that believe the technology will change everything about how we live and work. Becoming a leader in the space is essential to Meta and other companies whose leaders follow that line of thinking, Luria said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cFor our superintelligence effort, I\u2019m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,\u201d Zuckerberg said in a Threads post<\/a> earlier this month.\n <\/p>\n \n Meta last month invested<\/a> $14.3 billion in data labeling startup Scale AI. Scale founder and then-CEO Alexandr Wang joined the social media giant as part of the deal, along with several of Scale\u2019s other top employees. Wang is now leading the new Meta Superintelligence Lab, along with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMy job is to make amazing AI products that billions of people love to use,\u201d Friedman said in an X post earlier this month. \u201cIt won\u2019t happen overnight, but a few days in, I\u2019m feeling confident that great things are ahead.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n And in recent weeks, Meta has attracted top researchers and engineers from the likes of OpenAI, Apple, Google and Anthropic. Multiple news outlets, including Bloomberg<\/a>, Wired<\/a> and The Verge<\/a>, have reported that Meta has, in some cases, offered pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to new AI hires. It\u2019s a sign of just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go in his quest to win the AI superintelligence race, although the Meta chief has pushed back on some of the reporting around the compensation figures.\n <\/p>\n \n It is with that mission that Meta\u2019s new team will be working to build superintelligence. Here are some of the most prominent recent hires to the team. This list was compiled based on public statements, social media profiles and posts, and news reports, and may not be exhaustive. Meta declined to comment on this story.\n <\/p>\n \n Zuckerberg\u2019s drive to get ahead on AI may be rooted in part in his desire to own a foundational platform<\/a> for the next major technology wave.\n <\/p>\n \n Meta lost the race to control the operating systems for the mobile web era in the early 2000s and 2010s, which Apple and Google won. In recent years, he has not been shy about expressing his frustration with having to pay fees to app store operators<\/a> and comply with their policies<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n