Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg personally recruits 'Superintelligence' AI team with nine-figure pay packages

Meta

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally recruiting a 50-person "superintelligence" team with compensation packages reaching nine figures, as the tech giant races to achieve AI that surpasses human intelligence. Bloomberg reports that Zuckerberg has been meeting with top AI researchers and engineers at his Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto homes, offering seven- to nine-figure pay deals to lure talent from competitors like OpenAI and Google.The Facebook founder has rearranged desks at Meta's Menlo Park headquarters so new team members will sit near him, signaling his hands-on approach to what he considers Meta's most critical initiative. Some researchers have already accepted these unprecedented compensation offers, according to sources familiar with the recruitment drive.

Billionaire founder joins theMark Zuckerberg’s mission

The team's marquee recruit is expected to be

Alexandr Wang

, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, whose company is valued at $28 billion. Meta is negotiating a multi-billion dollar investment in

Scale AI

that would represent the social media giant's largest external investment to date, with Wang and other Scale AI employees joining the superintelligence unit after the deal closes.

Zuckerberg's aggressive recruitment push stems from frustration over Meta's recent AI setbacks, particularly the disappointing reception of

Llama 4

, the company's latest large language model released in April, Bloomberg reported.

The ultimate AI arms race

The initiative reflects the intensifying competition among

tech giants

to achieve

artificial general intelligence

(AGI) and eventually superintelligence—AI systems that exceed human capabilities across all tasks. While companies like OpenAI and Google pursue similar goals, Zuckerberg believes Meta's strong advertising revenue gives it a funding advantage over rivals dependent on external investment rounds.The CEO has told potential recruits that Meta's cash flow could support building multi-gigawatt data centers, potentially creating one of the world's most powerful server infrastructures for AI development.