This comes hot on the heels of several months or years of what Zuckerberg deemed lackluster performance from the Llama team, before he decided to get some seasoned pros in.
The new team is headed up Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman from Scale AI and Github, respectively.
They will be joined by an 11-man team that will spearhead Metas future AI efforts, that reads like a who’s who of significant AI efforts over the last couple of years from Anthropic, OpenAI and even Google’s DeepMind:
I’m excited to be the Chief AI Officer of @Meta, working alongside @natfriedman, and thrilled to be accompanied by an incredible group of people joining on the same day.
Towards superintelligence 🚀 pic.twitter.com/2ACj1lKN9Q
— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) July 1, 2025
Dual leadership
Wang will serve as the Chief AI Officer, and Friedman will head up AI products and applied research, writes Reuters.
Some reports/online rumors say the team members’ pay package will be about $10 million per year.
Sam Altman recently said Meta was offering $100 million in signup bonuses something similar in compensation, and OpenAI over the weekend promised to recalibrate compensation.
Past underperformance
The new team comes into place following hectic few weeks of aggressively poaching from OpenAI, Meta’s $14,3 billion acquisition of 49% of Scale AI and includes the former CEO of Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence AI Lab.
This spree came on heels of dubious Llama 4 benchmarks, reports of key scientists leaving the Llama team, and the delay of the Behemoth model, which Zuckerberg was not impressed by.
Industry insiders might now let out a sigh of relief that this might signal the end of Meta’s hiring spree, and that they are happy with how it sits. Now we can wait for the actual results this team produces.
Read more: Reuters had this last night, Gimodo goes paranoid, Wired focuses on the people, and a writeup from CNBC.
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