Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has launched a new AI division dedicated to developing superintelligence.
The new group, called Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), brings together all of Meta's existing AI teams under one roof, including the creators of the Llama language models, the FAIR research group, and product developers. The goal is to build AI systems capable of performing tasks at or above human level.
According to an internal memo, MSL will be led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. Zuckerberg called Wang “the most impressive founder of his generation.” Wang steps in as Chief AI Officer, confirming recent rumors.
Wang is joined by Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO and AI investor, who will focus on applied research and AI products. Meta has also hired Friedman's longtime business partner Daniel Gross, previously CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup founded by OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever that Meta tried and failed to acquire. According to CNBC, Gross is now part of the MSL leadership team and will work with Friedman to advance Meta's applied AI research and product development.
Top AI talent from OpenAI, Deepmind, and Anthropic join Meta
Over the past few weeks, Meta has recruited eleven more high-profile AI experts, including several former OpenAI staff:
- Shuchao Bi, co-developer of the GPT-4o voice mode
- Huiwen Chang, responsible for GPT-4o image generation and former Google Research contributor
- Ji Lin, involved in GPT-4.1, 4.5, and o4-mini
- Hongyu Ren, co-developer of GPT-4o and o3/o4-mini
- Jiahui Yu, co-lead of the multimodal team at OpenAI
- Shengjia Zhao, co-developer of ChatGPT and GPT-4
Jack Rae, who worked on Gemini and Chinchilla at Google DeepMind, and Pei Sun, who developed perception models for Waymo, also join the team. Joel Pobar moves from Anthropic back to Meta after more than a decade with the company in the past. Other new hires include Trapit Bansal (OpenAI) and Johan Schalkwyk (Google).
Zuckerberg's AI push
Meta plans to use MSL to build new “frontier” models, with Zuckerberg saying the company will invest “hundreds of billions” of dollars over the long term. According to Zuckerberg, Meta is uniquely positioned to deliver superintelligence thanks to its massive user base, strong hardware, and flexible corporate structure.
Recently, Meta lost ground to leading model providers with its Llama-4 model. This setback appears to be one reason for the new structure and team. In response to Meta's aggressive hiring, OpenAI is improving compensation and conditions for its staff.
