Meta recently attempted to acquire Safe Superintelligence. This AI startup was founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.
This was reported by sources to CNBC. When Sutskever rejected the takeover proposal, Mark Zuckerberg (photo) tried to recruit the company’s CEO and co-founder, Daniel Gross, instead.
Meta now plans to hire Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. It also wants to take a stake in their venture capital fund, with the aim of strengthening Meta’s AI team.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg already brought in Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang last week as part of a $14.3 billion investment in that AI startup. That turned out to be just the beginning. Zuckerberg is now apparently turning his attention to Daniel Gross, the CEO of Safe Superintelligence, and Nat Friedman, according to people familiar with the plans.
Safe Superintelligence rejected takeover
Safe Superintelligence was valued at $32 billion during a funding round in April. Sutskever, who founded the company just a year ago after leaving OpenAI, rejected both the takeover attempt and an offer to join Meta, the sources said.
Shortly after those talks broke down, Zuckerberg began negotiations with Gross, according to the sources. In addition to his role at Safe Superintelligence, Gross runs the venture capital fund NFDG, a name formed from their initials, together with Friedman.
Both men are joining Meta as part of the deal. They will work on products under Wang’s leadership, according to one of the sources. Meta will also acquire a stake in NFDG. A Meta spokesperson said the company will share more information soon.
Hunt for AI talent
Zuckerberg’s aggressive recruitment strategy is further intensifying the battle for AI talent. Meta, Google, and OpenAI—along with a host of other large companies and highly regarded startups—are all trying to develop the most powerful large language models and are betting on artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is AI that is considered equal to or superior to human intelligence.