Latest news with #Llama
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Mark Zuckerberg is spending megabucks on an AI hiring spree
When Mark Zuckerberg decided to launch his quest for the metaverse in 2021, he threw fistfuls of cash at the effort. Meta's boss is now repeating the act, this time with generative artificial intelligence (AI). Hot on the heels of what may be the world's most expensive acquihire—a $14.3bn deal to buy 49% of Scale AI, a data-labelling firm whose main asset is Alexandr Wang, its 28-year-old founder—people close to the matter say Mr Zuckerberg is planning to offer more than $1bn combined for two of Silicon Valley's hottest AI brain boxes, who would work under Mr Wang. It marks the start of a reset of Meta's generative-AI ambitions. Meta has made no comment, but if the deal goes through Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs and partners in a venture-capital (VC) firm called NFDG, will work in Meta's 'superintelligence" unit under Mr Wang, one of America's youngest self-made billionaires. The word 'superintelligence" is somewhat misleading. Rather than ground-breaking AI research, the team is expected to focus on developing new AI products for Meta, some of whose recent efforts, including its latest Llama model and the Meta AI chatbot, have disappointed. Someone who knows all three men calls the trio 'the avengers". He reckons they will have huge additional sums at their disposal to hire top AI researchers in order to unseat OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, as the dominant generative-AI firm. 'They're going to go big," he says. Indeed, there appear to be few limits on what Meta is prepared to spend. On June 17th Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, said on a podcast that Meta was offering signing bonuses of $100m to poach his staff. Another person close to the situation says Mr Zuckerberg sought to hire Ilya Sutskever, the brains behind ChatGPT and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI), another hot AI startup, to work at Meta, though he was unsuccessful. 'He is throwing insane amounts of money at people," the person said. The gambit shows Mr Zuckerberg's continued willingness to make mighty, long-term bets to reinvent his firm, even if his foray into the metaverse has been a costly flop. 'This is very Zuckerbergian to do these big, loud stunts just to prove how committed he is," says Eric Seufert, an independent tech analyst. And while the sums are big, they may not be as reckless as some pundits argued when reports surfaced that Meta was buying its stake in Scale AI, considering how much of Meta's $1.7trn market value is riding on its success in AI. The acquisitions also involve people with close personal ties and shared ideals. Mr Friedman, former boss of GitHub, a software-development platform owned by Microsoft, is friends with Mr Zuckerberg. He is part of Meta's Advisory Group, which provides guidance to the company. And, like Mr Zuckerberg, he is a lover of ancient Rome. He and Mr Gross helped launch a contest called the Vesuvius Challenge to decode scrolls buried in Herculaneum after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Mr Friedman and Mr Gross are savvy AI investors. Some call their VC firm the AI equivalent of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley juggernaut born out of the dotcom boom. Mr Friedman invested in Scale AI and is close to Mr Wang. Mr Gross is a co-founder of Mr Sutskever's SSI, which was recently valued at $32bn less than a year after its birth. It is not clear what will happen to NFDG. People who know the two say that joining Meta appeals not only for the generous terms, but also the excitement of working for an AI heavyweight and the money and computing power it will put at their disposal. 'This is the tech battle of our time," says one person close to the pair. Mr Zuckerberg intends to win.
West Australian
a day ago
- Business
- West Australian
THE ECONOMIST: Mark Zuckerberg is spending megabucks on an AI hiring spree for Meta to unseat ChatGPT
When Mark Zuckerberg decided to launch his quest for the metaverse in 2021, he threw fistfuls of cash at the effort. Meta's boss is now repeating the act, this time with generative artificial intelligence. Hot on the heels of what may be the world's most expensive acquihire — a $US14.3 billion ($22b) deal to buy 49 per cent of Scale AI, a data-labelling firm whose main asset is Alexandr Wang, its 28-year-old founder — people close to the matter say Mr Zuckerberg is planning to offer more than $US1b combined for two of Silicon Valley's hottest AI brain boxes, who would work under Mr Wang. It marks the start of a reset of Meta's generative-AI ambitions. Meta has made no comment, but if the deal goes through Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs and partners in a venture-capital (VC) firm called NFDG, will work in Meta's 'superintelligence' unit under Mr Wang, one of America's youngest self-made billionaires. The word 'superintelligence' is somewhat misleading. Rather than ground-breaking AI research, the team is expected to focus on developing new AI products for Meta, some of whose recent efforts, including its latest Llama model and the Meta AI chatbot, have disappointed. Someone who knows all three men calls the trio 'the avengers'. He reckons they will have huge additional sums at their disposal to hire top AI researchers in order to unseat OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, as the dominant generative-AI firm. 'They're going to go big,' he says. Indeed, there appear to be few limits on what Meta is prepared to spend. On June 17 Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, said on a podcast that Meta was offering signing bonuses of $US100m to poach his staff. Another person close to the situation says Mr Zuckerberg sought to hire Ilya Sutskever, the brains behind ChatGPT and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI), another hot AI startup, to work at Meta, though he was unsuccessful. 'He is throwing insane amounts of money at people,' the person said. The gambit shows Mr Zuckerberg's continued willingness to make mighty, long-term bets to reinvent his firm, even if his foray into the metaverse has been a costly flop. 'This is very Zuckerbergian to do these big, loud stunts just to prove how committed he is,' says Eric Seufert, an independent tech analyst. And while the sums are big, they may not be as reckless as some pundits argued when reports surfaced that Meta was buying its stake in Scale AI, considering how much of Meta's $US1.7t market value is riding on its success in AI. The acquisitions also involve people with close personal ties and shared ideals. Mr Friedman, former boss of GitHub, a software-development platform owned by Microsoft, is friends with Mr Zuckerberg. He is part of Meta's Advisory Group, which provides guidance to the company. And, like Mr Zuckerberg, he is a lover of ancient Rome. He and Mr Gross helped launch a contest called the Vesuvius Challenge to decode scrolls buried in Herculaneum after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Mr Friedman and Mr Gross are savvy AI investors. Some call their VC firm the AI equivalent of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley juggernaut born out of the dotcom boom. Mr Friedman invested in Scale AI and is close to Mr Wang. Mr Gross is a co-founder of Mr Sutskever's SSI, which was recently valued at $US32b less than a year after its birth. It is not clear what will happen to NFDG. People who know the two say that joining Meta appeals not only for the generous terms, but also the excitement of working for an AI heavyweight and the money and computing power it will put at their disposal. 'This is the tech battle of our time,' says one person close to the pair. Mr Zuckerberg intends to win .
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
The secret AI sauce behind Meta stock's 683% rise since the dark days of 2022
Picture scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and spotting an advertisement that feels tailor-made for you. You're seeing Meta Platform 's artificial intelligence tools in action, crafting ads for its partner businesses that specifically target and attract customers based on their interests. It has also become the secret sauce behind Meta's wildly success ad unit driving its stellar financial performance and stock performance. But few could see Meta's path to AI dominance just a few years ago. In 2022, the social media giant hit a low as investors balked at CEO Mark Zuckerberg's costly metaverse project and Apple's privacy changes disrupted its ad business. Meta shares fell by more than 60% in 2022, at one point closing as low as $88.91 a share. Then came Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency" in 2023 aimed at reversing the tide with layoffs and a focus on profitability. Meta quickly rewarded its loyal investors with a nearly 200% stock jump that year, as its AI-enhanced ads revived revenue growth and the company's cost cuts jumpstarted earnings. And despite lingering concerns over the company investing too much and too quickly in the nascent technology, it was hard to argue with the results. Meta delivered revenue and earnings beats for all four quarters of fiscal 2024. Jump to 2025 and Meta has fully repositioned itself as an AI-first company, one of the most celebrated in the field. The company's open-source Llama large language models are the cornerstone of its strategy, competing against the likes of OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini. Zuckerberg's investments in data centers and hardware aim to secure the company's long-term edge. Building these large powerful AI models is critical to having "control of our own destiny" in powering the various AI opportunities Meta is focused on, Zuckerberg has said, emphasizing improved advertising and user experiences. As of Wednesday's close, its stock is up roughly 683% since that November 2022 closing low. Meta's AI strategy has not been without hurdles. The company delayed the release of Behemoth, its most advanced large language model, originally slated for April, until the fall or later due to performance issues. At the same time, Llama 4's release didn't generate much enthusiasm, fueling perceptions that Meta was falling behind in the AI race. The challenges compounded when 11 out of 14 AI researchers left the company amid intensified competition. The biggest risk to Meta's stock is losing its lead on the cutting edge of AI, said Gil Luria, analyst at D.A. Davidson, who noted that the underwhelming Llama 4 opened the door to competitors, including OpenAI, Anthropic and some Chinese models. Indeed, Zuckerberg personally stepped in to recruit top talent to stay out front, including bringing back Robert Fergus, a former Google DeepMind researcher and previous Meta employee, to enhance the AI division. Earlier this month, Meta made another major move investing $14.8 billion for a 49% stake in data-labeling company Scale AI and hired its CEO to lead a new "superintelligence" research lab, joined by Scale AI staff. In a sign of its aggressiveness, Meta also offered employees at OpenAI bonuses of $100 million to leave the ChatGPT creator, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a recent podcast . Key growth ingredient So what exactly has made Meta's AI so special? The company's newest Llama 4 is "multimodal," which means it can process and learn from multiple types of data including text, images or backgrounds, similar to Google's Gemini and OpenAI's GPT-4 multimodal models. It powers Meta's ad growth by enabling advertisers to create tailored ads quickly and cost-effectively, and boosts engagement and performance across Facebook and Instagram. "Performance improvements from being multimodal benefit all applications," said Matt Steiner, Meta's VP of monetization infrastructure, ranking & AI foundations, in a CNBC interview. "Models trained on different data sources like images or videos or text all benefit from being trained on the same model," he added, noting this versatility drives better ad targeting and content creation. Steiner emphasized that this approach "helps us maintain our competitive edge in advertising by maximizing return on advertiser spend while controlling costs." Meta trails only Google in digital advertising, capturing 23% of global ad revenue in 2024 compared to Google's 28%, according to eMarketer. Meta's ad revenue rose 22% last year, outpacing Google's 12% and the industry's 9%. This growth, driven by AI-powered targeting, underscores Meta's momentum. "The ability to deliver better ads allows them to sell those ads for more, which is why they're gaining share in the digital ad market," said Luria, noting that Meta has been adept at using traditional machine learning techniques. He said Meta is taking this technology to an advanced level, "automating it further — allowing advertisers to generate content and make even more well-informed decisions." This next wave, generative AI, "deepens Meta's competitive moat." He highlightdc an example of how Reels is becoming more compelling to users. That's because Meta is "getting better at the AI algorithm that allows them to serve the next best short video to keep the consumer engaged." The introduction of ads on WhatsApp, announced this week, also expands the reach of Meta's AI ad tools, creating a new place where it can generate high-margin revenue. Meta on Tuesday announced new generative AI tools for its Advantage+ platform, enabling advertisers to integrate brand elements into personalized ads and create animated videos from images with music and text overlays. The company is also testing a new feature in "Video Highlights" which uses AI summaries to better digest video ads by skipping to the highlights of the video. Looking ahead, Meta's generative AI advancements are enabling it to deliver a higher volume of personalized ads. The goal: To keep and strengthen its AI edge. As Meta's Steiner put it, the company's "compounding effects" of AI improvements fuel growth, which should help Meta make more gains in digital advertising. The company's financial and strategic commitment show Zuckerberg and Co. are in a league of their own in digital ads as Meta continues to take market share. We're confident in Meta's ability to keep innovating on its advertising tools using AI, keeping customers around and its business growing. We currently have a 2 rating on the stock with a price target of $750. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
OpenAI is winding down its work with Scale AI, whose founder is joining Meta
OpenAI is winding down its work with Scale AI, the artificial intelligence startup that received a multibillion-dollar investment from Meta earlier this month and saw its founder join the social media company to lead an AI effort. Scale is best known for its work helping major tech companies, including OpenAI, prepare data they use to train cutting-edge AI models. But OpenAI has been pulling back from the startup over the last six to 12 months, according to an OpenAI spokesperson. OpenAI has been looking to work with other data providers that have kept pace with innovation and understand what the latest models need, the spokesperson said. OpenAI's decision to wrap up its work with Scale AI wasn't influenced by the Meta partnership, the spokesperson said. Bloomberg first reported that OpenAI is phasing out its relationship with Scale. Scale AI did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Meta is investing $14.3 billion into Scale and will have a 49% stake in the startup. But Meta will not have any voting power at the company, a Scale AI spokesperson told CNBC earlier this month. Scale AI's founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo that he's leaving for Meta and will be joined by a small number of employees as part of the agreement. Scale AI is promoting Jason Droege, the chief strategy officer, to the CEO role. Meta's big bet on Wang is CEO Mark Zuckerberg's latest effort to bolster his company's AI development amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the latest episode of the "Uncapped" podcast, which is hosted by his brother, that Meta has tried to poach OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million with even larger annual compensation packages. Meta has been pouring billions of dollars into AI in recent years, but Zuckerberg has been frustrated with the company's progress, particularly as the latest version of its flagship Llama AI models received a lukewarm response. Scale AI previously said that Meta's investment and hiring of Wang will not impact the startup's customers, and that Meta will not be privy to any of its business information or data.
New York Post
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
Sam Altman says Meta tried to poach top OpenAI talent with $100M offers: ‘That basically never works'
Meta Platforms has tried to lure top OpenAI talent with signing bonuses reaching $100 million and promises of even more generous annual compensation, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. 'They (Meta) started making giant offers to a lot of people on our team,' Altman said on the 'Uncapped' podcast released Tuesday. 'You know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that (in) compensation per year.' 4 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims that Meta has tried to poach his talented staffers with offers of up to $100 million. AFP via Getty Images Despite the aggressive recruitment efforts, Altman noted that 'at least, so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.' The Post has sought comment from Meta and OpenAI. Altman framed the poaching attempts as part of a broader and intensifying battle for elite AI talent, likening the current climate to the free-agent frenzy of professional sports. 'I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,' he said. 'Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.' The comments come at a pivotal moment in Meta's artificial intelligence strategy. The company recently invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and hired the startup's founder, Alexandr Wang, to head up a new 'superintelligence' division. The much-ballyhooed 'acquihire' deal included a 49% stake in Scale AI and saw a handful of Wang's colleagues follow him to Meta. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly taken a personal interest in accelerating the company's AI capabilities. According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has directly participated in high-profile recruitment, including the recent hiring of Jack Rae, a leading researcher from DeepMind, Google's AI research lab. 4 Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken a hands-on approach to building out his AI team due to frustration over the slow pace of development of his company's flagship language model. AP Altman, however, questioned whether throwing large sums of money at individuals creates the right environment for innovation. 'I think that there's a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying 'We're just going to try to copy OpenAI,'' he said. 'That basically never works. You're always going to where your competitor was, and you don't build up a culture of learning what it's like to innovate.' 4 Altman said that so far none of his top-level employees have agreed to jump ship to Meta. REUTERS Meta has historically championed open-source AI, particularly with its Llama series of large language models. Yet the company has faced setbacks. The release of its newest flagship AI model was delayed amid internal concerns about its readiness, according to the Wall Street Journal. Zuckerberg's deep investment in AI infrastructure, however, has not gone unnoticed. Some industry observers argue that Meta is still playing a critical role in shaping the field. 4 Meta recently made a splash by acquiring a 49% stake in AI startup Scale AI — a move that resulted in CEO Alexandr Wang joining the tech giant. AP 'They basically built the rails for open source AI development, and so much of what is happening in AI is being built on Meta,' said Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, during an appearance on CNBC's Power Lunch on Tuesday. Meta's open-source approach has enabled a wide range of third-party developers to build applications on top of its models. Proponents argue this could ultimately offer a counterbalance to the more closed strategies of rivals like OpenAI. Meanwhile, OpenAI has been active on the M&A front as well. Last month, the company completed a $6.4 billion all-equity acquisition of io, a startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. Ive has since joined OpenAI, bringing with him a design-forward approach to AI hardware and interfaces.
