Even Zuckerberg Steps In... Meta's Superintelligence Research Lab Becomes an AI Talent 'Black Hole'

Fierce Battle to 'Capture AI Talent'

Successive Recruitment of Former OpenAI and SSI Researchers

Recently, 11 Top-Level Researchers Joined

Even Reviewing Papers by Competitor Researchers

Zuckerberg Reportedly Contacted Hundreds of People

Superintelligence Research Lab to Oversee AI Development

Plans to Invest Over $70 Billion

Aiming for Competitive Edge over Google and OpenAI

World-renowned artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have recently been joining Meta’s newly established Superintelligence Research Lab in succession. Just about a week after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, commented, "Meta has offered large sums to OpenAI employees to get them to move, but no one has left the company," Meta secured additional former OpenAI researchers of Chinese descent who played key roles in developing major models. They have also brought in a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI). Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly making direct contact with talent to recruit them to the team.

◇ Meta's 'AI Talent Hunt'

Even Zuckerberg has stepped in... According to The Information on the 6th, Meta recently recruited four former OpenAI researchers from Chinese universities: Zhao Shengjia, Ren Hongyu, Wei Jiahui, and Bi Suchao. Zhao Shengjia and Ren Hongyu were instrumental in the development of 'o1-mini' and 'o3-mini.' Recently, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Meta hired four people, including three researchers who worked at OpenAI’s Zurich office, confirming that Meta’s drive to acquire OpenAI talent is ongoing.

In response to Meta's poaching attempts, CEO Altman publicly criticized Meta, saying it offered bonuses of up to $100 million (approx. ₩136.8 billion) to entice his employees—calling it "insanity." Meta denied Altman's claim, but the flow of former OpenAI researchers joining Meta continues. The employees who made the switch from OpenAI’s Swiss office to Meta are reported to have previously worked for Google DeepMind. It is estimated that more than 11 top-level AI researchers have joined Meta’s Superintelligence Research Lab in recent weeks.

According to Bloomberg, Daniel Gross, former CEO and co-founder of SSI, has joined Meta’s newly established Superintelligence Research Lab to oversee AI product development.

Gross, together with OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, founded the AI startup SSI last year and left the company on the 29th of last month. Sutskever and newly appointed president Levy have now assumed the roles of co-CEOs at SSI. At one point, CEO Zuckerberg even tried to acquire SSI, but the deal reportedly fell through due to Sutskever’s refusal. Subsequently, Zuckerberg turned to recruiting Gross into the Superintelligence Research Lab.

Zuckerberg, by reviewing the papers of researchers at major competitors like OpenAI, is said to be actively seeking candidates himself. The recruitment list reportedly includes PhDs from prestigious institutions such as UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University. It is revealed that Zuckerberg has directly emailed or contacted hundreds of researchers.

◇ Will It Turn the Tide in the AI Race?

Meta once led the AI industry as a champion of open-source AI models, but its latest AI model released this year failed to gain notable attention, revealing its limitations. Even Llama 4, the large language model (LLM) released by Meta in April, failed to meet market expectations. Amid these circumstances, the newly created Superintelligence Research Lab will oversee Meta's core AI research team, the Llama model development team, and the AI product team as a whole. Meta is reportedly planning to invest over $70 billion (approx. ₩95 trillion) in the Superintelligence Research Lab. CEO Zuckerberg also turned heads by acquiring a 49% stake in the data labeling startup Scale AI for $14.3 billion, thereby bringing its founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, into the fold.

By shifting its strategy to the major project of building superintelligence, Meta aims to find a breakthrough in global AI competition. Bloomberg stated, “Zuckerberg has been aggressively pursuing top talent to gain an edge over competitors like OpenAI and Google, even hosting potential hires at his home to lead recruitment activities.”

Eunhee Ko koko@hankyung.com