The deal, framed as a strategic partnership, will see OpenAI roll out at least 10 gigawatts of data centre capacity powered by NVIDIA systems. Each stage of deployment will bring about additional investment, with the first gigawatt scheduled to go live in the second half of 2026 on NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang called the agreement a milestone moment. “NVIDIA and OpenAI have pushed each other for a decade, from the first DGX supercomputer to the breakthrough of ChatGPT. This investment and infrastructure partnership mark the next leap forward—deploying 10 gigawatts to power the next era of intelligence.”

CEO Sam Altman stressed the centrality of computing power to global progress, saying: “Everything starts with compute. Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilise what we’re building with NVIDIA to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”

President Greg Brockman added that the company’s growth has always been tied to NVIDIA’s technology. “We’ve been working closely with NVIDIA since the early days of OpenAI. We’ve utilized their platform to create AI systems that hundreds of millions of people use every day. We’re excited to deploy 10 gigawatts of compute with NVIDIA to push back the frontier of intelligence and scale the benefits of this technology to everyone.”

The agreement positions NVIDIA as OpenAI’s preferred partner for computing and networking, ensuring both companies align their hardware and software development to maximise efficiency. This new arrangement adds to OpenAI’s growing ecosystem of collaborators, which already includes Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and other members of the Stargate consortium.

OpenAI’s user base has soared to more than 700 million weekly active users, boosting its demand for computational resources. At the same time, Microsoft, once OpenAI’s exclusive compute partner, has had its role redefined to a first-refusal arrangement. OpenAI has also moved to diversify its infrastructure, recently announcing a $300 billion deal with Oracle to expand cloud capacity.

With Microsoft, OpenAI is betting big on scaling up to the levels it believes are necessary for the development of superintelligence. The final details of the partnership are expected to be settled in the coming weeks.

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.

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.

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.