Meta strengthens the AI team: after an unsuccessful attempt to buy Sutskever's startup, the company attracts its CEO

Meta continues to increase its efforts to attract key figures in the field of artificial intelligence. After a deal with Scale AI founder Alexander Wang, in which the company invested $14.3 billion, Meta targeted Daniel Gross, CEO of Safe Superintelligence, founded by Ilya Sutskever, as well as former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. This was reported by sources familiar with the details of the negotiations.

Earlier this year, Meta attempted to acquire Safe Superintelligence, which was valued at $32 billion in April. According to sources, Ilya Sutskever refused both the offer to buy a startup and Meta's attempt to invite him personally. After that, Zuckerberg began discussing cooperation with Gross.

Gross and Friedman head the NFDG venture fund. Under the agreement, both entrepreneurs will move to Meta and work under Alexander Wang on projects in the field of artificial intelligence. Meta will get a stake in NFDG, the sources specify.

Meta representatives said that in the coming weeks, the company plans to tell more about the development of the superintelligence direction and new team members. Gross, Friedman and Sutskever did not comment on the deal.

Meta's active staffing policy reflects the increasing competition in the AI market. Meta, Google, OpenAI and others continue the race to develop the most powerful language models and general artificial intelligence (AGI) systems. According to the head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, Meta offered OpenAI employees bonuses for signing a contract of up to $100 million, but key specialists refused the offers.

Meta previously invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, taking a 49% stake in the company. OpenAI, in turn, spent about $6.5 billion to collaborate with designer Jony Ive and buy his startup io. Google and Microsoft are also actively competing for AI talent: Google has returned the founders of Character.AI in a multibillion-dollar deal, and Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleiman of Inflection AI in a $650 million deal.

Daniel Gross is known as an entrepreneur and investor in the field of artificial intelligence. He founded the search engine Cue, acquired by Apple in 2013, and held senior positions there, responsible for projects in the field of machine learning and Siri. Later, he became a partner at Y Combinator, and then co-founded Safe Superintelligence with Sutskever. Nat Friedman took over GitHub after buying the Microsoft platform in 2018.

The NFDG Fund, according to Pitchbook, has invested in companies such as Coinbase, Figma, CoreWeave, Perplexity and Character.ai. The question of the future of the fund's investment portfolio under the Meta deal remains open.