🎯 “The List” That Shook Silicon Valley: How Zuckerberg Is Chasing a Superintelligence Dream

When $100M offers and late-night dinners meet a hunger for AGI talent

⚡️ The most expensive hiring spree in AI history

In a move straight out of a tech thriller, Mark Zuckerberg is personally leading a recruitment war, dangling $100 million+ compensation packages, hosting dinners at his homes, and orchestrating a private “Recruiting Party” chat—all to woo top talent from OpenAI, DeepMind, and beyond.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The prize? Building a new Meta superintelligence lab powerful enough to challenge the AI leaders.

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🧠 Why this is a turning point in AI—talent as the new commodity

1. Top-tier talent on the move
   Meta recently secured four senior OpenAI researchers—Shengjia Zhao, Shuchao Bi, Jiahui Yu, and Hongyu Ren—plus the trio from Zurich: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai. Their OpenAI profiles have already been deactivated.

2. Zuckerberg’s personal pitch
   Moving beyond headhunters, Zuckerberg is personally sending WhatsApp messages, arranging one-on-one dinners in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe, and even planning desk placements—signaling a recruitment intensity rarely seen in tech.

3. Scale AI tie-in
   To lead this charge, Meta invested US $14.3 billion in Scale AI and onboarded its CEO, Alexandr Wang, kidnapped in the pantheon of young AI visionaries.

4. Units of competition
   OpenAI’s Sam Altman has publicly decried Meta’s tactics, dubbing them a distraction. But Altman’s own words—“none of our best people have taken it”— now ring hollow as Meta’s wins go public.

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🔥 What’s fueling this $100M arms race?