NAIROBI, Kenya— Mark Zuckerberg is pulling out all the stops—and writing billion-dollar checks—to catch up in the generative AI race, but not everyone’s convinced it’s money well spent.
Meta has reportedly been dangling $100 million bonuses to lure top AI engineers from rivals like OpenAI. Yes, you read that right—$100 million, just as a sweetener.
According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the talent drain is real. And now, some of the brightest minds in AI are boarding the Meta ship.
One of the splashiest moves? Meta’s recent $14 billion investment for a 49% stake in Scale AI, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in data labeling for training AI models.
As part of the deal, Scale AI founder and ex-CEO Alexandr Wang is now officially on Team Zuck—and reportedly part of a newly formed “superintelligence” unit.
“Meta has finalized our strategic partnership and investment in Scale AI,” a company spokesperson confirmed. “We’ll deepen our work producing data for AI models, and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to help drive our superintelligence efforts.”
But the recruitment blitz doesn’t stop with Wang. Meta has reportedly tried to poach big names across the industry, including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, talent from Google’s DeepMind, and even engineers from emerging players like Perplexity AI and video startup Runway.
Zuckerberg himself is said to be personally driving the charge—motivated by growing anxiety that Meta’s AI efforts, especially its Llama model, are falling behind rivals like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude.
On platforms like LM Arena, where users pit AI models against each other in tasks like code writing, Llama has lagged.
So the new plan? Go big or go home. Meta is pouring billions into building an AI dream team focused on developing “superintelligence”—a next-gen artificial intelligence that can outthink and outperform humans.
Tech blogger Zvi Moshowitz, however, isn’t buying the hype. “There are some extreme downsides to going pure mercenary,” he said, “and being a company with products no one wants to work on.” His bottom line? “I don’t expect it to work, but I suppose Llama will suck less.”
Still, Meta’s stock price is flirting with record highs, and its market value is inching toward the $2 trillion mark.
But some institutional investors are starting to sweat. Ted Mortonson, a strategist at Baird, says there’s concern about Zuckerberg’s unchecked spending. “Right now, there are no checks and balances. He can basically do whatever he wants,” Mortonson said.
The long-term vision is clear: Meta wants to use AI to supercharge its advertising empire—cutting out creative agencies and automating ad creation and targeting using intelligent tools. In other words, turning ads into a plug-and-play experience for brands.
But that future won’t come cheap or quickly. “AI talent hires are a long-term investment unlikely to impact Meta’s profitability in the immediate future,” said CFRA analyst Angelo Zino. “Still, you need those people on board now and to invest aggressively to be ready for that next phase.”
In fact, The New York Times recently reported that Zuckerberg is even considering ditching Llama altogether in favor of more competitive external models—a dramatic pivot if it happens.
Yet some experts say Meta doesn’t necessarily need to build the world’s most powerful large language model (LLM) to win.
According to Mehmet Canayaz of Penn State University, success could come from deploying smaller, specialized AI agents tailored to Meta’s platform and user needs.
“Even firms without the most advanced LLMs, like Meta, can succeed as long as their models perform well within their specific market segment,” he said.
So, is Zuckerberg’s AI shopping spree a brilliant long game or just billionaire panic spending? Only time—and maybe Llama 3.0—will tell.
