Meta Announces Formation of ‘Superintelligence’ Unit Amid AI Recruiting Push

July 1, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Meta is forming a new unit focused on developing its AI efforts toward superintelligence, hiring several employees away from OpenAI and others.
  • CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees of the new unit’s creation on Monday, according to multiple reports.
  • Some in the industry are skeptical that the current crop of generative AI models are capable of being developed into AGI or superintelligence.

Meta Platforms (META) informed employees on Monday of the creation of a new unit inside the Facebook and Instagram parent following an expensive recruiting push to ramp up Meta’s artificial intelligence development.

The new unit will be dubbed the “Superintelligence” unit, named for its goal of creating an AI that has more capabilities than a human brain, per an internal memo reported by several outlets. The news follows reports in recent weeks that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been personally involved in recruiting new hires for the unit, with packages including signing bonuses up to $100 million offered to certain employees at ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and others.

Alexandr Wang, CEO of an AI startup called Scale that Meta recently acquired, will lead the unit as Meta’s “Chief AI Officer,” the memo said. It also laid out a number of new hires to join the team, including several from OpenAI, Google’s DeepMind lab, and Amazon (AMZN)-backed Anthropic.

What would constitute developments to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and superintelligence varies across the industry, and some researchers have said there’s little evidence that Meta—or any other tech giant—is close to making those leaps.

Meta did not immediately respond to Investopedia’s request for comment.

Shares were little changed just after markets opened Tuesday, after rising 0.6% to close at a record $738.09 on Monday.

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