Meta's AI talent acquisition spree: Zuckerberg calls $200M/yr figures 'inaccurate'
What's the story
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed recent reports claiming that the company is offering pay packages of $100-200 million to recruit artificial intelligence (AI) talent from competitors. Zuckerberg called these reports "inaccurate" but didn't clarify the actual figures in an interview with The Information. He did, however, acknowledge that the market for AI talent is extremely competitive and it's worth investing heavily to attract top-notch researchers.
Market dynamics
Zuckerberg on AI talent market
Zuckerberg said, "A lot of the specifics that have been reported aren't accurate by themselves. But it is a very hot market." He further explained that there are only a few top researchers in demand across different labs. The Meta CEO also said that in terms of overall AI spending, which includes "hundreds of billions of dollars on compute and building out multiple gigawatt clusters," it makes sense to compete aggressively for the best 50-70 researchers to build your team.
Recruitment approach
'AI doesn't require a large team'
Zuckerberg clarified that AI doesn't require a large team. He said, "You actually kind of want the smallest group of people who can fit the whole thing in their head." The tech billionaire also explained that from this perspective, the amount spent on recruiting these individuals is still relatively small compared to the overall investment in superintelligence.
Collaboration prospects
Zuckerberg denies poaching claims, says Meta building global team
When asked about any discomfort in his interactions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after the poaching allegations, Zuckerberg was nonchalant. He said Meta is building a new team from scratch, and there are five or six places globally with a lot of great researchers. Zuckerberg also emphasized that they are not targeting anyone individually but want to get to know all top researchers in the industry for possible future collaborations.
Infrastructure growth
Developing massive data centers for AI
Zuckerberg also announced on Threads that Meta is building several massive data centers to support its AI ambitions. The first one, Prometheus in Ohio, is expected to go live next year. He said they are building "multiple more titan clusters as well," hinting at naming all their data centers after Greek titans of myth. The largest facility is coming up in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which Zuckerberg has claimed is "nearly the size of Manhattan."
Team composition
Meta's new superintelligence labs team
As of July 15, Meta's new Superintelligence Labs team includes researchers from OpenAI, Google's DeepMind, and other top AI companies. Notable names include Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer; former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI start-up founder Daniel Gross, and Apple's Ruoming Pang. In his post, Zuckerberg reiterated that Meta plans to invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" into data center capacity to build superintelligence.