Meta’s freaking out: It offered 32 billion for an AI startup by a former OpenAI scientist. When it failed, it started buying the entire ecosystem
Tech giant Meta (formerly Facebook) has committed to one of the most aggressive moves in the history of artificial intelligence. It has offered $32 billion for the startup Safe Superintelligence (SSI), founded by Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist of OpenAI. SSI is only a year old, but thanks to its founder and its focus on so-called safe superintelligence, it has a reputation as an exceptionally ambitious project.
Sutskever turned down the offer – not only did he reject the acquisition of SSI, but he also turned down a direct hire to lead the development of Meta AI. But that wasn’t the end of it. In fact, Meta took an unusual tactic – if it can’t buy the company itself, it will try to buy its investors.
Zuckerberg’s firm has therefore entered into negotiations for a more than billion-dollar stake in the NFDG fund, which is run by Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman – SSI’s main financial backers. In doing so, Meta opens up indirect access to the most promising AI startups on the market.
At the same time, Meta has invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and engaged its founder, Alex Wang, just 28 years old, to lead their new ‘Superintelligence Lab’.
The company is offering nine-figure bonuses, up to $100million compensation packages and personal recruiting from Mark Zuckerberg. OpenAI has called these recruitment tactics ‘aggressive’.
Thus, Meta is trying to outperform competitors like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, not by its own development, but by massive purchases of talent and infrastructure. While its own models (e.g. Llama) are still lagging behind, Zuckerberg is betting that the massive investment will shorten the development of AI by years.
The next 12 months will show whether he’s right – or just expensively testing the limits of what money can’t buy.
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