Not just co-founder’s company, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also wanted to buy another ex-OpenAI employee's AI startup

Meta

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly explored acquiring several prominent artificial intelligence (AI) startups to accelerate the company's development in the field. According to recent reports, Meta held preliminary discussions to purchase Perplexity, led by CEO Aravind Srinivas, and

Safe Superintelligence

(SSI), the new venture from former OpenAI co-founder

Ilya Sutskever

. It has also been claimed that Zuckerberg showed interest in buying

Thinking Machines Lab

, a startup founded by former OpenAI CTO

Mira Murati

.Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Verge said that the talks did not advance to the formal offer stage due to disagreements over valuation and strategic alignment. Notably, Murati’s AI startup has closed on a $ 2 billion investment at a $10 billion valuation.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated that Meta has aggressively tried to poach OpenAI employees, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million along with substantial annual compensation packages.Speaking on the "Uncapped" podcast, Altman addressed the rivalry between the two companies.

“I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” he said. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped, and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things,” he added.

Meta acquires ScaleAI, hires its CEO

The canvassing efforts coincide with the formation of a new AI leadership team at Meta. Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale, has been hired to lead the new division in a deal reportedly valued at over $14 billion. Wang officially joined Meta this week after his departure from Scale last week.Reporting to Wang, SSI co-founder Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are poised to co-lead the Meta AI assistant project. Wang is currently meeting with Meta's senior leadership and actively recruiting for the new team, with an official announcement anticipated as early as next week.