Zuckerberg has also brought on 11 new hires in the AI field, including researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the source said.
The new appointments include former DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun; several OpenAI alumni such as Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Shengjia Zhao and Hongyu Ren; as well as Anthropic’s Joel Pobar, who previously spent more than a decade at Meta, according to the source.
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of US$100 million to recruit them.
But some analysts worry that Meta’s AGI bet could be another moonshot to yield near-term returns. Its other big bet, the Reality Labs unit, has burned through more than US$60 billion since 2020, with little to show beyond the Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets.
Together, big tech companies are expected to spend US$320 billion on AI this year.
In 2024, Microsoft spent US$650 million to scoop up most of Inflection AI’s staff, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, while Amazon poached key talent from Adept.
Yet the finish line for AGI remains elusive: Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has said current methods will not be enough to reach the holy grail of the technology, while SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son pegs the breakthrough within a decade.
