Meta has reportedly internally announced the formation of a new advanced AI division called ‘Meta Superintelligence Labs’ (MSL). This new unit brings together several of the company’s existing AI teams, including the FAIR research group, foundational model developers, and applied AI engineers. It will be led by Alexandr Wang (the former CEO of Scale AI), who recently joined Meta as Chief AI Officer following the company’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub) is also joining to help lead the applied AI side of the lab, reports Bloomberg.
According to the report (citing an internal memo), Zuckerberg said that Meta Superintelligence Labs will focus on developing the next generation of the company’s AI models. The new lab will also aim to accelerate the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
In recent weeks, the social media giant has made headlines for aggressively hiring top AI researchers from rival companies like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. Several reports suggest that at least 14 researchers from these companies have joined Meta’s new AI lab so far. This includes Lucas Beyer, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren from OpenAI. Jack Rae and Pei Sun came from DeepMind, while Joel Pobar previously worked at Anthropic. These researchers include experts who played key roles in building major AI models at their previous companies.
According to multiple reports, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally involved in the recruitment process. He has reportedly met with potential hires at their homes and even contacted some candidates through WhatsApp. Zuckerberg is also said to have directly emailed some researchers at Google DeepMind with job offers (sometimes without requiring formal interviews). A recent report even suggests that the company could acquire voice AI startup PlayAI along with its key team.
This latest wave of new hires has also raised questions about how much Meta is paying. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently claimed that Meta offered some researchers signing bonuses as high as $100 million to poach them. However, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth denied the claims, calling them exaggerated.
Meanwhile, along with the new lab, the social media powerhouse is also expanding its infrastructure to support future AI development. The company is reportedly seeking to raise up to $29 billion in private funding to build large-scale data centers in the United States. These facilities would provide the computing power needed to train and deploy next-generation AI models. At the start of this year, Meta’s CEO called 2025 ‘a defining year for AI’ and announced a $65 billion investment in the company’s AI infrastructure.
The formation of a new AI lab becomes crucial for the firm, since despite all such efforts, it recently faced some major setbacks. For example, its AI chatbot came under fire for inappropriate interactions with users, including minors, and the planned release of its ‘Llama 4 Behemoth’ model was delayed due to performance concerns.
