Meta has recently lost some ground in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) space, particularly after it suspended a major model rollout last month. Nevertheless, the social media company is striving to recover by making a new $15 billion investment in Scale AI.
According to Bloomberg and The New York Times, the Mark Zuckerberg-led corporation has signed an agreement to purchase a significant minority investment in the startup, which provides data labelling and model evaluation services to Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, among other industry giants. Meta would acquire a 49% interest in Scale AI as a result of the $14.8 billion deal.
The development transpired with Meta’s strategic efforts to create a new research lab focused on the pursuit of “superintelligence” as Zuckerberg is putting together a group of professionals to create artificial general intelligence. These experts are drawn from a team of AI engineers and researchers who have visited with him in recent weeks at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.
Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of the Scale AI start up, has been recruited by Meta to work at the new laboratory. The two companies have been in negotiations to invest billions of dollars which would also bring other Scale AI people to Meta. Several researchers from top AI firms, including OpenAI and Google, have been offered seven to nine figure remuneration packages by Meta.
The 41-year-old referred to artificial intelligence as “possibly one of the most important innovations in history” in February. “This year is going to set the course for the future,” he remarked.
The new lab is reportedly a part of a bigger reorganization of Meta’s AI initiatives. The firm, which currently owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently struggled with internal management issues related to the technology, as well as staff turnover and multiple unsuccessful product releases.
The Meta’s CEO has spent billions of dollars transforming his business into a dominant force in artificial intelligence. The technology sector has been racing to develop ever-more-powerful artificial intelligence since OpenAI’s 2022 release of the ChatGPT chatbot. Zuckerberg has encouraged his company to integrate AI in all of its products, including its smart eyewear and the newly launched Meta AI software.
Mark Zuckerberg steers “superintelligence” project
Zukerberg has been upset with the disappointing performance of Meta Platforms Inc. He has therefore made it his primary objective to hire for the fresh and covert unit, which is internally known as a “superintelligence group” with an ambitious mission in mind.
According to him, Meta has the potential to surpass other tech firms in reaching artificial general intelligence, or AGI, the idea that machines are capable of performing a wide range of jobs just as effectively as humans. It is noteworthy that superintelligence, if developed would surpass AGI.
After reaching that milestone, Meta might incorporate the functionality into its product line, which would include a variety of AI tools such as the Meta chatbot and its AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses, in addition to social media and communications platforms.
Zuckerberg is personally hiring nearly all of the 50 employees he seeks to assemble for the new team, including a new head of AI research. He has moved desks at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters to ensure that the new hires will sit close to him as they discuss private plans.
He is assembling the team together with the projected multi-billion dollar investment in Scale AI, which provides data services to assist businesses in training their models and creates unique AI applications for governments and corporations.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have to compete as the technology could prove to be the industry’s future. The titans have invested in their own artificial intelligence labs and start-ups. Amazon has spent $8 billion in the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, while Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI. They have also licensed their technology and hired staff from well-known start-ups, spending billions of dollars in the process.
Meta has almost ten years of experience in artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg established the company’s first dedicated artificial intelligence lab in 2013 after failing to acquire DeepMind, a revolutionary start-up, to Google. Now, Google’s AI initiatives revolve around the same.
Zuckerberg has made it clear that his company would prioritize artificial intelligence. He has apparently entered “founder mode” in the past two months, exhibiting a more involved management style. Giving away its AI code openly, or “open source,” is one of Meta’s tactics for advancing in the field to make sure developers and others can use its tools.
The business unveiled Meta AI, a chatbot, and Llama, an open-source artificial intelligence model. Meta AI was integrated into its Ray-Ban smart glasses, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. According to Zuckerberg, Meta AI is used by over one billion individuals each month as of May.
Quality of Llama 4 triggers Mark Zuckerberg’s involvement
The CEO’s desire to control the hiring process stems in part from his dissatisfaction with the reaction and quality of Llama 4, the latest iteration of Meta’s extensive language model used to power chatbots and other services. Zuckerberg, who had repeatedly informed Meta insiders that he wanted the finest AI solution by the end of the year, both in terms of overall usage and performance, felt let down by the most recent release in April.
His demands put a lot of strain on AI-focused employees who worked weekends and evenings to meet those targets. However, the performance of the model has been questioned by developers who believe they overpromise and underdeliver, as well as by Meta’s own leadership.
Later, Meta postponed plans to launch “Behemoth,” its largest model, which it had hailed as even better than rival models from Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. However leadership reportedly became worried that it didn’t go far enough in improving upon earlier versions. Moreover, Meta’s AI division even lost staff members to competitors. Infighting among team leaders, a competitive labor market and the demanding speed of product development were the causes of the departures.
Zuckerberg then became more interested in expanding the new team as a result of these shortcomings. He created the “Recruiting Party” group WhatsApp chat for senior management to talk about possible hiring candidates. The chat group’s members have been speaking extensively in an effort to find talent.
Zuckerberg has been creating his own list of potential hires and prefers to be in charge of the first approach and maintain constant communication during the hiring process. He expects that the new bench would help Meta strengthen its Llama models and provide stronger AI tools for speech and personalization features.
Zuckerberg persuaded AI researchers, infrastructure engineers and other businesspeople to join Meta’s team during lunches and dinners at his homes in California throughout the previous month.
Mark Zuckerberg pins his hopes on Llama
The foundation of Meta’s AI aspirations is its Llama models, which drive its AI chatbot and have aided in the training of the algorithms that provide users of social media with relevant material and advertisements. Additionally, Meta has made Llama open-source, which means that anybody can use the model’s blueprints to build upon it. The company wants Llama to serve as the basis for AI solutions around the world, just how Google’s Android has fueled a generation of mobile software applications.
Several years of changing goals and AI leadership transition at Meta preceded the release of Llama 4. Meta swiftly reallocated expertise and resources to establish a new, more customer-focused AI division, called GenAI, after OpenAI’s ChatGPT established a new AI benchmark in 2022. That team was entrusted with transforming the Llama models and years of AI-related research from Meta scientists into real consumer products.
However, there were growing pains associated with the recalibration. Internally, some believed that Meta’s early consumer-focused AI initiatives, such as the development of AI personas modeled after famous people like Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady, were pointless in comparison to rivals like OpenAI’s attempts to achieve more ambitious objectives, like artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Many employees left because they were worried that Meta didn’t take AGI’s disruptive potential seriously enough. The churn has persisted as Meta has implemented major alterations in its GenAI and FAIR divisions this year.
Scale AI
Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, an engineer who was eventually let go by the company, co-founded Scale AI in 2016 which aided other companies in developing artificial intelligence technologies. It employed hordes of contract workers to sort through enormous volumes of data, labeling and “cleaning” it so that sophisticated AI systems could be trained on it. OpenAI, Microsoft and Cohere, a Toronto-based AI start-up, were among its clients.
Scale AI has recently pushed to expand its commercial and public sector businesses, sending engineers and consultants to assist corporations and governments in developing AI-powered software.
The pressure on Meta is only increasing as some startups decide to use open AI technologies that Meta’s Chinese rivals are developing instead. In January, DeepSeek, a Chinese business, unveiled a cutting-edge open-source AI model that was supposedly developed at a fraction of the price of American versions.
FuriosaAI, a Korean AI chip startup, turned down Meta’s $800 million acquisition offer in March. Meta wished to enhance its own chip development operations by bringing in the engineering talent and expertise of FuriosaAI. Both Meta’s pipeline of people with an infrastructure focus and its own efforts to create high-performance, customized processors for AI applications were called into question by the unsuccessful acquisition.
