{"id":859463,"date":"2026-09-24T22:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/859463\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T22:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T22:22:16","slug":"metas-14-billion-ai-bet-looks-like-its-finally-paying-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/859463\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta’s $14 billion AI bet looks like it’s finally paying off"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The eye-popping $14.3 billion deal Meta (META<\/a>) founder Mark Zuckerberg made to buy up all the employees of hot AI startup Scale AI in 2025 \u2014 including well-connected wunderkid Alexandr Wang, who got about $5 billion as part of the deal \u2014 appears to be paying off. <\/p>\n

“People thought Mark Zuckerberg was crazy when Meta paid Alexandr Wang $5 billion to be Meta’s Chief AI Officer. At the time, the price looked outrageous,” tech investor Adam Khoo said in an X post. “Fast-forward to today: Meta’s new AI products developed under Wang’s leadership have added roughly $200 billion in market value. Suddenly, paying billions to secure world-class talent doesn’t look quite so crazy. That’s how great entrepreneurs think. The question isn’t: How much does this person cost? The question is: How much value can this person create? If someone can help you create $10 billion in value, paying them $1 billion can be an absolute bargain.” <\/p>\n

In effect, the deal changed the view of Meta being late to the AI game to outright leading it. <\/p>\n

Meta’s Steve Jobs-like surprise at Meta Connect late Wednesday<\/a> came in the form of the Muse Charm. It’s a standalone pocket device built exclusively for voice interaction with the company’s new Muse agent, currently one of the most-downloaded apps (and a major stock market driver this week, as discussed in the above video). <\/p>\n

Zuckerberg also showcased a major shift toward “Personal Superintelligence” by unveiling a hardware-meets-AI moment in the Meta VR Glasses. <\/p>\n

Weighing just 100 grams \u2014 roughly one-fifth the weight of Meta’s Quest 3 \u2014 the $1,299 spatial computing glasses<\/a> feature 5K micro-OLED displays, tethered puck processing, and native eye and hand tracking. <\/p>\n

On the smart eyewear front<\/a>, Meta debuted the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses, starting at an entry-level $249. Joining them are the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, designed purely for open-ear listening and AI voice interaction. <\/p>\n

Wang, decked out in a pair of camo Crocs, played a prominent role on stage at the event with a presentation of his own. <\/p>\n

\"Chief<\/a> Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang delivers a speech during the Meta Connect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 23, 2026. (Reuters\/Carlos Barria) \u00b7 REUTERS \/ REUTERS <\/p>\n

Meta investors had already been having a week to remember as the new Muse AI agent surged<\/a> to the top spot on Apple’s App Store. <\/p>\n

Muse reached 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days across both the US and Canada App Stores, according to the latest Sensor Tower data. <\/p>\n

What’s more, Muse surpassed OpenAI’s (OPAI.PVT<\/a>) ChatGPT in early adoption, with 1.8 million downloads in Muse’s first 12 days compared to 1.3 million for ChatGPT. Muse also set a new US daily download record of 264,000 on Sept. 19, its third straight day above 200,000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The eye-popping $14.3 billion deal Meta (META) founder Mark Zuckerberg made to buy up all the employees of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,32258,181,507,12424,74],"class_list":["post-859463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alexandr-wang","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}