Despite proposing some of the most lucrative packages in Silicon Valley history, the project is finding it difficult to hold on to its star hires.

The Superintelligence lab, launched in April 2025 with the aim of leapfrogging Meta competitors in artificial general intelligence (AGI), has been hit by high-profile departures.

Rishabh Agarwal, recruited from Google DeepMind earlier this year on a reported $1 million salary, announced in late August that he would be leaving after barely five months. 

“It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density. But after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk,” Agarwal wrote in a farewell post on X.

He also repeated Zuckerberg’s own words back at him: “In a world that’s changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.” The quote has since been widely interpreted as researchers using the Meta chief’s mantra to justify walking away.

Avi Verma and Ethan Knight, both previously with OpenAI, have returned to their former employer after brief stints at MSL. In a further blow, longtime Meta executive Chaya Nayak has also left, joining OpenAI to work on special initiatives.

These issues have led to uncomfortable questions for Meta. If billion-dollar offers cannot retain talent, what can? Insiders point to structural problems: frequent reorganisations, shifting goals, and reports of micromanagement at the top. 

The company recently split its AI staff into four separate groups, creating suspense inside a lab already tasked with one of the most ambitious projects in tech.

Experts say money is not the ultimate driver for the best minds in the field. DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis once said frontier researchers want to “help influence how AGI plays out and steward the technology safely into the world” rather than simply chase paycheques. 

Similarly, Anthropic’s cofounder Benjamin Mann said: “My best case at Anthropic is we affect the future of humanity. My best case at Meta is we make money.”

Meanwhile, rivals are capitalising. OpenAI has not only regained former staff but strengthened its bench at a time when it publicly criticised Meta’s aggressive poaching tactics. 

Elon Musk’s xAI is also pulling engineers away from Zuckerberg’s company, with reports noting at least 14 defections this year alone. Unlike Meta’s cash-heavy approach, Musk promotes a performance-driven culture anchored in equity and speed.

Meta has invested heavily in leadership, hiring Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to run its AI efforts. But reports of disagreements between Zuckerberg and Wang over timelines for superintelligence highlight deeper tensions. 

Meta’s resources can buy time and talent, but not loyalty or mission alignment.

“Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023,” Igor Babuschkin announced on Wednesday in a post on X. “I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed.”

The engineer, who previously worked on AlphaStar at Google DeepMind and held research roles at OpenAI, was key in building xAI into a major player in the sector in less than two years. 

He oversaw infrastructure, product and applied AI projects, and played a central role in constructing the company’s Memphis, Tennessee supercomputer, completed in just 120 days, despite industry veterans calling the goal “impossible.”

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Babuschkin recalls one defining moment during that build, when a late-night debugging session with Musk led to the discovery of a critical BIOS setting error. “I learned 2 priceless lessons from Elon: #1 be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems, #2 have a maniacal sense of urgency,” he wrote.

His time at xAI comprised of rapid technical achievement but also controversy. The company’s Grok chatbot has faced repeated public backlash, ranging from inserting extremist conspiracy theories into responses to antisemitic rants, to enabling the creation of AI-generated nude videos of public figures such as Taylor Swift. Grok was even suspended from X earlier this year for inflammatory political claims.

Environmental concerns have also followed xAI’s expansion. The Memphis supercluster, dubbed “Colossus”, is powered by 35 methane gas turbines. Local residents and advocacy groups, including the NAACP, have filed appeals over increased air pollution in majority-Black neighbourhoods. 

A University of Tennessee study reported nitrogen dioxide levels near the site had risen by 79%, with local asthma cases spiking in the nearby Boxtown community.

Despite these challenges, Babuschkin describes his departure with affection. “As I drive away today, I feel like a proud parent, driving away after sending their kid away to college,” he said. “My heart is brimming with tears of joy, rooting for the company as it grows and matures.”

His new firm, Babuschkin Ventures, will fund startups developing AI systems aligned with human values, and will support research into AI safety. He says the inspiration came from a recent dinner with Max Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, where they discussed how to ensure “our children can flourish” in a world with advanced AI.

“The singularity is near, but humanity’s future is bright,” Babuschkin stated, noting his belief that safe, beneficial AI could help unlock solutions to some of the world’s most profound scientific problems, including quantum gravity and the Riemann hypothesis.

Grok 2, built on Musk’s proprietary Grok-1 language model, has been marketed as a less filtered and more “truth-seeking” alternative to tools like ChatGPT or Claude. 

Unlike many rivals, it draws directly from live data on X (formerly Twitter), enabling it to react to breaking news and trending conversations in real time. It also offers multimodal features, producing text, images, and video, and is currently available to X Premium+ subscribers.

By open sourcing the system, developers and researchers will gain direct access to Grok 2’s underlying code and architecture. This would allow them to audit, modify, and build upon the technology. 

Musk framed the decision as part of a consistent release pattern, stating it was “high time” to share the new model with the public. This aligns with a growing industry shift toward open-weight AI models, with Meta’s LLaMA, Mistral, and the GPT-oss series from OpenAI following similar paths.

However, Grok’s looser content restrictions have attracted complaints, with past instances of misleading or offensive responses bringing concern. Opening up its code could amplify risks, including the spread of misinformation or the misuse of the technology in sensitive fields such as medical diagnostics or autonomous systems. 

Grok Imagine—its image and video generator—has already been caught in controversy over its potential to produce explicit content, prompting further debate on the balance between openness and safety.

xAI continues to present Grok as a counterweight to larger AI players like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, putting transparency and developer freedom at the forefront. 

Analysts also note that this strategy may strengthen Musk’s business network, opening possibilities for integration across Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X.