Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who co-founded OpenAI’s Zurich office and also previously worked at Google DeepMind, have officially exited OpenAI and joined Meta to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). 

Their departure is a change in the balance of power, especially in the European AI research space, where Zurich has become a strategic outpost for some of the most advanced work in machine learning.

Their recruitment is part of Meta’s massive, under-the-radar goal to take over AGI development. At the centre of this is Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, a unit granted deep access to the company’s compute infrastructure and charged with building AI models that can rival or even surpass human reasoning.

It’s a pivot that founder Mark Zuckerberg is not leaving to chance.

Multiple reports now point to Zuckerberg taking a personal lead in poaching efforts, bypassing HR and headhunting directly via WhatsApp. He’s allegedly coordinating efforts through a “Recruiting Party” group chat and following up with private dinners in his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe. The approach is unconventional but it’s starting to yield results.

One of the most headline-grabbing wins so far is the $14.3 billion investment Meta recently made in Scale AI. The deal gave Meta a 49% stake in the data-labeling company and also brought on board Alexandr Wang, Scale’s 28-year-old founder and CEO, to lead its superintelligence vision. 

The investment values Scale at $29 billion and ranks among Meta’s most expensive strategic plays since acquiring WhatsApp.

Still, the road hasn’t been smooth. Meta has failed to secure OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, both of whom have taken off in new directions. 

Sutskever is now heading up Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), a stealth startup focused on developing safe AGI, while Schulman has joined another secretive firm led by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. Their departures from OpenAI hint at ideological rifts and the growing splintering of high-level AI talent.

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been publicly dismissive of Zuckerberg’s charm offensive. In a recent podcast with his brother Jack, Altman quipped, “I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on [those offers].”

But the facts on the ground are changing fast. The exodus of top researchers, Meta’s multibillion-dollar bets, and Zuckerberg’s visible sense of urgency all point to a conclusion that the competition is just starting and Meta has no intention of staying behind.

With compensation packages rumoured to exceed $100 million for senior hires, Analysts are bothered about market distortion and the ethical implications of consolidating so much power within a handful of firms. 

Meta’s open-source LLaMA models may have generated buzz, but many insiders acknowledge the company has lagged behind rivals like OpenAI and Google in performance and adoption.

The company seems to be correcting that, not just with money, but with a structural overhaul that places AGI development at the centre of its future.

In an attempt to bolster Meta’s superintelligence initiative, the company has been dangling compensation packages of over $100 million to lure top AI researchers, particularly from OpenAI and Google DeepMind. 

This is tied to an internal drive led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, now spearheading Meta’s advanced AI team from an office reportedly just steps away from Zuckerberg’s.

Despite the high figures involved in the Meta AI hiring initiative, the campaign has largely hit a wall.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on the Uncapped podcast with his brother Jack Altman on Tuesday, confirmed the reports and offered his own assessment.

“[Meta has] started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team. You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year […] I’m really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that.”

Meta’s targets reportedly included high-profile figures like OpenAI’s Noam Brown and DeepMind’s Koray Kavukcuoglu, but both declined the offers. 

The failure to secure these names leads to questions about the effectiveness, and ethics, of Meta’s recruitment tactics in what is quickly becoming a high-stakes talent competition.

Altman didn’t stop there as he used the podcast as a platform to criticise Meta’s approach to innovation, drawing a line between OpenAI’s mission-oriented culture and what he sees as Meta’s cash-first strategy.

“I don’t think they’re a company that’s great at innovation,” he said, doubling down on his view that simply catching up isn’t enough in the AI game. Companies, he argued, must genuinely lead.

Beyond recruitment, Meta has poured billions into its AI bets, including a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, the company’s second-largest acquisition after WhatsApp. 

It’s already brought in Google DeepMind’s Jack Rae and Johan Schalkwyk from Sesame AI, among others. However, according to Altman, it will take more than star hires to change a transformative AI journey.

He credits OpenAI’s retention strength, reportedly one of the highest in the industry at 67%, to its focus on a collective mission: achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The underlying message is that for OpenAI’s top engineers, purpose trumps pay; so the Meta AI hiring approach requires a different direction.

There’s also a growing front in the competition for influence, social media. Altman revealed that OpenAI is exploring the development of a new AI-powered social app designed to serve feeds based not on algorithms, but on user intent. It’s a direct shot at the core of Meta’s business model.

Meta, on its end, is already testing similar waters through its Meta AI app, but user feedback has been rocky, with reports of confusion and some deeply personal AI chat interactions accidentally shared more widely than intended, a potential privacy minefield.

If OpenAI succeeds in rolling out a more intuitive, AI-driven alternative to traditional social media, it could disrupt Meta’s position, and how the internet itself is experienced.

So, not just about who can pay the most or hire the fastest, but who is building up to be a deeper contest between purpose and profit, between foundational innovation and reactive ambition. And while Meta may have the cash, OpenAI, for now, seems to have the conviction.

The Meta CEO is personally building a new team aimed at artificial general intelligence (AGI), machines that can think and operate at or beyond human capability.

At the heart of this development is a covert “superintelligence” unit made up of roughly 50 top-tier engineers and researchers. 

According to multiple reports, Mark Zuckerberg is leading recruitment himself. That includes closed-door meetings with experts at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto, strategic restructuring of Meta’s offices to keep the team close, and eye-watering compensation offers ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars.

The motivation is the frustration over Meta’s perceived stagnation in the AI space. Meta’s flagship large language model, Llama 4, hasn’t produced the breakthrough results the company hoped for. 

In fact, a planned release of a more powerful version, nicknamed “Behemoth”, was recently delayed due to issues about its real-world capabilities. 

Meanwhile, competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI are thriving hard to expand their influence, drawing talent and investment with growing momentum.

Zuckerberg is determined not to be left behind. Reports from Bloomberg and The New York Times confirm that Meta is in advanced talks to invest over $10 billion in Scale AI, a startup founded by Alexandr Wang. 

Once the deal is sealed, Wang is expected to join the AGI group, which operates separately from Meta’s existing AI research division.

“I heard of at least three instances last week where Meta lost out on AI talent to competitors offering over $2 million a year,” Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das wrote on X.

Zuckerberg reportedly believes that Meta has the infrastructure, data scale, and financial muscle to match and surpass the progress of others in the AGI arms race. 

If achieved, the technology would likely be embedded into Meta’s ecosystem, impacting everything from WhatsApp and Instagram to the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and enterprise AI tools.

However, the plan leaves users questioning. How will this “superintelligence” group integrate with Meta’s existing AI teams? What risks are involved in placing so much responsibility, and expectation, on one internal unit? And is AGI even within reach? 

The field is divided and some experts believe we’re close. Others say we’re decades away, if not longer, with no clear path forward.

Still, for Zuckerberg, this is a mission.