While the pursuit of an ill-defined superintelligence—typically meant as an AI system that could surpass the collective intelligence of humanity—would have seemed a quixotic sci-fi quest in the past, it has become an increasingly common way for top AI companies to attract talent and secure a competitive edge.
Aside from FAIR, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions on generative AI development in a bid to catch up to OpenAI, following the launch of that company’s wildly popular ChatGPT in November 2022. Zuckerberg rebuilt the entire company around the technology and succeeded in creating highly successful open-source AI models, branded as Llama, in 2023 and 2024. The Llama models helped Meta recover from an underwhelming pivot to the metaverse.
It remains unclear whether Meta will be able to declare the Scale deal as a big win. It’s also not yet certain whether Yann LeCun will find himself marginalized within the Meta research ecosystem. But one big rising power player is undeniable: Alexandr Wang.
Now, with a potential Meta investment,Wang’s efforts are paying off big time. Zuckerberg can only hope the deal works as well for him as it has for Wang.
