(Image source from: Business-standard.com)
In recent months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been actively engaging with some of the brightest minds in artificial intelligence, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. He is offering substantial financial packages of up to $100 million, or approximately ₹860 crore, in an effort to elevate Meta's position in the competitive AI landscape. Zuckerberg is personally communicating with numerous researchers, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to persuade them to join his new Superintelligence lab. He is prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit these individuals, making them among the highest-paid professionals in the sector. In addition to the lucrative offers of $100 million to select candidates, Zuckerberg has also invested $14 billion to acquire a stake in the AI startup Scale, under the leadership of CEO Alexandr Wang, who is tasked with heading his new AI division. This 28-year-old has now become one of the highest-paid hires in the technology sector's history.
The report further indicated that Zuckerberg has approached Aravind Srinivas, a co-founder of Indian descent, with an interest in acquiring Perplexity, an AI search company. He has also made offers to employees of OpenAI, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, although CEO Sam Altman has stated that none of his top talent has opted to join Zuckerberg. Some recipients of Zuckerberg's direct messages were caught off guard, with a few doubting the authenticity of the outreach and dismissing the emails as potential scams. Those who declined his offers expressed concerns that his broad vision of a “superintelligence” team of 50 lacks a detailed execution strategy.
Nonetheless, Zuckerberg is taking a proactive role in attracting leading AI researchers, confident that their contributions will significantly benefit Meta. After reassuring potential hires about the authenticity of his outreach, he frequently invites them to his residences in Palo Alto or Lake Tahoe. He remains intimately involved in the hiring process, even strategizing their seating arrangements.
