Axios AI

Mark Zuckerberg wants to play a bigger role in the development of superintelligent AI — and is willing to spend billions to recover from a series of setbacks and defections that have left Meta lagging and the CEO steaming.

Why it matters: Competitors aren’t standing still, as made clear by recent model releases from Anthropic and OpenAI and highlighted with a blog post last night from Sam Altman that suggests “the gentle singularity” is already underway.

To catch up, Zuckerberg is prepared to open up his significant wallet to hire — or acqui-hire — the talent he needs.

• Meta wants to recruit a team of 50 top-notch researchers to lead a new effort focused on smarter-than-human artificial intelligence, a source told Axios yesterday, confirming earlier reporting by Bloomberg and the New York Times.
• As part of that push, the company is looking to invest around $15 billion to amass roughly half of Scale AI and bring its CEO, Alexandr Wang, and other key leaders into the company, The Information reported.