Meta is aggressively recruiting new members for its Superintelligence lab, the team responsible for creating AI that surpasses human intelligence.

CNBC reports that earlier this year, Meta sought to acquire Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a leading AI startup with a valuation of $32 billion. Ilya Sutskever, a founding member of OpenAI, co-founded SSI in June 2024, just one month after stepping down as OpenAI’s chief scientist. SSI is focused on a security-first method in the development of superintelligence, or AI with advanced capabilities.

Sutskever allegedly declined Meta’s offer to acquire SSI and refused a job offer from Meta, according to sources who spoke with CNBC. Subsequently, Meta initiated discussions on a potential deal with SSI’s CEO, Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Gross and Friedman jointly manage a venture capital firm called NFDG, which derives its name from their initials.

Now, multiple sources tell CNBC that Meta is taking a stake in NFDG in exchange for Gross and Friedman joining Meta as part of its Superintelligence lab. The size of Meta’s investment in NFDG is unclear.

Gross and Friedman will reportedly work on AI products at Meta under another new hire: Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Wang announced last week that he would be leaving Scale AI for Meta as part of a $14.3 billion investment Meta made in the startup.

^{SSI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP}

The new hires will reportedly be compensated well. According to a Bloomberg report last week, Meta is offering up to a nine-figure pay for researchers on its Superintelligence team. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed this week that Meta tried to recruit OpenAI researchers by offering $100 million signing bonuses and even higher compensation packages as leverage.

According to Bloomberg, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally leading the recruitment effort for the Superintelligence team. He has invited leading AI researchers and engineers from other companies to meet with him at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe to talk about offers to join Meta. Zuckerberg’s aim is for Meta to be the first company to achieve superintelligence, which it can then use to power its products, like its AI chatbot and AI smart glasses.

Meta’s move to bring on fresh talent like Wang, Gross, and Friedman arrives as the company tries to hold onto existing AI talent. Menlo Ventures venture capitalist Deedy Das posted on X last week that he had heard of three cases last week of Meta losing AI researchers to OpenAI and Anthropic despite offering compensation of $2 million or more.

“The AI talent wars are absolutely ridiculous,” Das wrote.

Meta is currently offering $2M+/yr in offers for AI talent and still losing them to OpenAI and Anthropic. Heard ~3 such cases this week.

The AI talent wars are absolutely ridiculous.

Today, Anthropic has the highest ~80% retention 2 years in and is the #1 (large) company top AI… pic.twitter.com/YSv5UNV5H2

— Deedy (@deedydas) June 10, 2025

Meta stock was up 15% year-to-date at the time of writing.