Meta (NASDAQ:META) just fired a warning shot in Silicon Valley’s AI war. After the underwhelming launch of its latest AI model, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting bigagain. This time, it’s personal. He’s hired three key OpenAI researchersLucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhaiwho helped build OpenAI’s Zurich lab and previously worked at Google DeepMind. The trio’s exit is a rare public crack in OpenAI’s defenses, and Zuckerberg’s offersreportedly up to $100 million per recruitmake it clear he’s playing to win.
And he’s not stopping there. Meta recently poured $14 billion into Scale AI and brought its CEO, Alexandr Wang, on board to spearhead a new superintelligence team. While OpenAI’s Sam Altman publicly shrugged off the defectionscalling Zuckerberg’s moves insane with a smirkthe pressure is mounting. Meta’s biggest model rollout was delayed, prompting a full-blown recruiting blitz that even targeted OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman. They passed, but the message was sent: Meta wants the best minds, and it’s willing to outspend anyone to get them.
Zuckerberg’s ambitions are backed by serious capital. Meta plans to spend up to $65 billion this yearmuch of it aimed directly at AI infrastructure. His future vision? AI assistants that build your ads, talk like your friends, and replace customer service reps with digital clones. With Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all racing toward the same prizehuman-level intelligenceZuckerberg’s aggressive push could reshape the competitive hierarchy. Meta might’ve stumbled out of the gate, but with this team, this cash, and this firepower, it just might catch up faster than anyone expects.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.