Zuckerberg Shifts Strategy After SSI Acquisition Rejection
Recruits CEO Instead
Attempts to Attract OpenAI Employees... Sam Altman Criticizes
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was once a leader in the open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model sector but fell behind due to talent departures. Now, the company is leveraging its vast financial resources to attract top AI talent. However, this aggressive approach has drawn criticism from others in the industry, leading to ongoing controversy.
On June 19 (local time), U.S. business outlet CNBC reported that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, recently invested $14.3 billion (approximately 19.6 trillion won) in the startup Scale AI and brought on board its founder, Alexander Wang. CNBC noted that this move appears to be just the beginning.
The outlet also cited sources saying that Meta now plans to recruit Daniel Gross, CEO of Safe Superintelligence (SSI)?an AI startup founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Meta initially attempted to acquire SSI, but after Sutskever rejected the acquisition offer, Zuckerberg reportedly entered separate negotiations with Gross.
Sutskever left OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, in May 2024 and co-founded SSI with Gross, who was formerly Apple’s head of AI, and Daniel Levy, a former OpenAI researcher. In a June 2024 interview with Bloomberg, Sutskever stated, “Our goal is to develop safe superintelligence as our first product.” SSI’s corporate value was reportedly estimated at $32 billion (approximately 43.8 trillion won) during a funding round in April 2024.
Nate Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, is also expected to join Meta alongside Gross. News of Meta recruiting Friedman was first reported by The Information on June 18. Both are expected to work on the superintelligence development team led by Alexander Wang at Meta.
Gross currently runs a venture capital (VC) firm called NFDG with Friedman, and Meta is reportedly planning to acquire a stake in NFDG as well.
However, Zuckerberg’s aggressive talent acquisition has drawn criticism from others in the industry. Recently, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, revealed that Meta offered his employees bonuses of up to $100 million (approximately 137 billion won) to switch companies, but so far, all employees have declined. He said, “I respect Meta as a company, but I don’t think they are particularly innovative,” delivering a pointed critique.
A Meta spokesperson stated, “We will share more information about our superintelligence research and the new team members joining us in the coming weeks.” Gross, Friedman, and Sutskever did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
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