Latest news with #Uncapped
Economic Times
3 hours ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Mark Zuckerberg made abortive attempt to buy ex-OpenAI executive Ilya Sutskever's AI startup: Report
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's $14.2 billion investment in Scale AI last week, and roping in its CEO Alexandr Wang, appears to have been part of a larger game plan to build expertise in artificial intelligence (AI). Days after Sam Altman accused Zuckerberg of trying to poach OpenAI's talent, reports have emerged that Meta has been out shopping for other startups, including Ilya Sutskever's $32 billion Safe Superintelligence, launched just a year ago. Sources told news channel CNBC that Meta tried to acquire the startup founded by Sutskever, former chief scientist at OpenAI, earlier this year. However, Sutskever rebuffed the big tech giant's Zuckerberg started eyeing the chief executive of the startup, Daniel Gross. Zuckerberg is setting up a team of experts to achieve so-called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), or machines that can match or surpass human capabilities. The Meta chief's apparent plans to personally recruit around 50 people, including a new head of AI research for the AGI team, is driven partly by frustration over the performance and reception of Meta's latest large language model, Llama 4. Altman swiped at Zuckerberg in his brother's podcast, 'Uncapped', saying that Meta tried to poach the company's AI talent for its superintelligence team. Additionally, he said Meta is not "great at innovation". The 'special thing' about OpenAI is that the company has built a culture that is good at 'repeatable' innovation, Altman noted.
Time of India
10 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Mark Zuckerberg made abortive attempt to buy ex-OpenAI executive Ilya Sutskever's AI startup: Report
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg 's $14.2 billion investment in Scale AI last week , and roping in its CEO Alexandr Wang, appears to have been part of a larger game plan to build expertise in artificial intelligence (AI). Days after Sam Altman accused Zuckerberg of trying to poach OpenAI 's talent, reports have emerged that Meta has been out shopping for other startups, including Ilya Sutskever 's $32 billion Safe Superintelligence , launched just a year ago. Sources told news channel CNBC that Meta tried to acquire the startup founded by Sutskever, former chief scientist at OpenAI, earlier this year. However, Sutskever rebuffed the big tech giant's efforts. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Play War Thunder now for free War Thunder Play Now Undo Subsequently, Zuckerberg started eyeing the chief executive of the startup, Daniel Gross. Zuckerberg is setting up a team of experts to achieve so-called "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), or machines that can match or surpass human capabilities. Live Events The Meta chief's apparent plans to personally recruit around 50 people, including a new head of AI research for the AGI team, is driven partly by frustration over the performance and reception of Meta's latest large language model, Llama 4. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Altman swiped at Zuckerberg in his brother's podcast, 'Uncapped', saying that Meta tried to poach the company's AI talent for its superintelligence team. Additionally, he said Meta is not "great at innovation" . The 'special thing' about OpenAI is that the company has built a culture that is good at 'repeatable' innovation, Altman noted.
CNBC
16 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever's $32 billion AI startup, but is now planning to hire its CEO
When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poached Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang last week as part of a $14.3 billion investment in the artificial intelligence startup, he was apparently just getting started. Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree has now turned to Daniel Gross, the CEO of Ilya Sutskever's startup Safe Superintelligence, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. It's not how Zuckerberg planned for a deal to go down. Earlier this year, sources said, Meta tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, which was reportedly valued at $32 billion in a fundraising round in April. Sutskever, who just launched the startup a year ago, shortly after leaving OpenAI, rebuffed Meta's efforts, as well as the company's attempt to hire him, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the information is confidential. Soon after those talks ended, Zuckerberg started negotiating with Gross, the sources said. In addition to his role at Safe Superintelligence, Gross runs a venture capital firm with Friedman called NFDG, their combined initials. Both men are joining Meta as part of the transaction, and will work on products under Wang, one source said. Meta, meanwhile, will get a stake in NFDG, according to multiple sources. The Information was first to report on Meta's plans to hire Gross and Friedman. Gross, Friedman and Sutskever didn't respond to CNBC's requests for comment. A Meta spokesperson said the company "will share more about our superintelligence effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks." Zuckerberg's aggressive hiring tactics escalate an AI talent war that's reached new heights of late. Meta, Google and OpenAI, along with a host of other big companies and high-valued startups, are racing to develop the most powerful large language models, and pushing towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that's considered equal to or greater than human intelligence. Last week, Meta agreed to pump $14.3 billion into Scale AI to bring on Wang and a few other top engineers while getting a 49% stake in the startup. Altman said on the latest episode of the "Uncapped" podcast, which is hosted by his brother, that Meta has tried to lure OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages. Altman said "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that." "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Atlman said on the podcast. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things." Meta didn't respond to a request for comment on Altman's remarks. OpenAI, for its part, has gone to similar lengths, paying about $6.5 billion to hire iPhone designer Jony Ive and to acquire his nascent devices startup io. Elsewhere, the founders of AI startup were recruited back to Google last year in a multibillion-dollar deal, while DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman was brought on by Microsoft in a $650 million purchase of talent from Inflection AI. In Gross, Zuckerberg is getting a longtime entrepreneur and AI investor. Gross founded the search engine Cue, which was acquired by Apple in 2013. He was a top executive at Apple and helped lead machine learning efforts and the development of Siri. He was later a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, before co‑founding Safe Superintelligence alongside Sutskever. Friedman co-founded two startups before becoming the CEO of GitHub following Microsoft's acquisition of the code-sharing platform in 2018. NFDG has backed Coinbase, Figma, CoreWeave, Perplexity and over the years, according to Pitchbook. It's unclear what happens to its investment portfolio in a Meta deal, a source said.
Qatar Tribune
2 days ago
- Business
- Qatar Tribune
Meta offered $100mn bonuses to recruit OpenAI employees
Agencies Meta has offered $100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker's talent and strengthen its own generative AI teams, the startup's CEO, Sam Altman, has said. The alleged attempts by Meta to hire OpenAI staffers are the latest signs of a frenzy to hire top engineers to develop AI models, and they come at a time when Facebook's parent company is working on building its superintelligence unit to catch up with competitors. Competition for AI talent has reached a feverish pitch as superstar researchers are being courted like professional athletes on the belief that individual contributors can make or break companies. A competitor of OpenAI, Meta had also offered 'giant' annual salaries exceeding $100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the 'Uncapped with Jack Altman' podcast released Tuesday. 'It is crazy,' Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. 'I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.' The OpenAI cofounder said Meta had made the offers to 'a lot of people on our team.' 'I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,' Altman said. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Once recognized as a leader in open-source AI models, Meta has suffered from staff departures and has postponed the launches of new open-source AI models. The social media titan has invested billions of dollars in artificial intelligence technology amid fierce competition in the AI race with rivals OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in January that the firm planned to invest at least $60 billion in AI this year, with ambitions to lead in the technology. Last week, Meta entered into a deal reportedly worth more than $10 billion with Scale AI, a company specializing in labeling data used in training artificial intelligence models. As part of the deal, company founder and CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta to help with the tech giant's AI ambitions, including its work on superintelligence efforts. Comparing Meta to his company, Altman said on the podcast that 'OpenAI has a much better shot at delivering on superintelligence.' 'I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join... I don't think that's going to set up a great culture,' the OpenAI boss added. According to U.S. media reports, Meta has also offered nine-figure annual salaries to Scale AI executives.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Sam Altman says Meta tried to poach OpenAI staff with $100 million bonuses
Sam Altman says Meta is offering massive compensation packages — some reportedly topping $100 million — to lure top artificial intelligence talent from OpenAI. So far, the effort hasn't worked, he said. 'They started making these giant offers to a lot of people on our team,' Altman said Tuesday on the Uncapped podcast, hosted by his brother, Jack Altman. 'You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses.' 'None of our best people have decided to take them up on that,' he said. New episode of Uncapped with @sama. Enjoy 🤗 — Jack Altman (@jaltma) June 17, 2025 Meta has not publicly commented on the accusation. Altman said he believes Meta is aggressively hiring because 'their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped. He added, 'I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.' Still, he criticized the company's approach. 'There's many things I respect about Meta as a company, but I don't think they're a company that's great at innovation,' Altman said. 'I think we understand a lot of things they don't.' The comments come as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accelerates efforts to recruit for a new 'superintelligence' AI lab. Bloomberg and The New York Times have reported that Zuckerberg has been personally meeting with AI experts at his homes and reconfiguring Meta's Menlo Park headquarters to place the team near his office. Last week, Meta announced a $14.3 billion investment for a 49% stake in Scale AI, bringing founder Alexandr Wang and some of his employees to Meta. 'That basically never works,' he said. '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.'
