The shares of Meta Platforms Inc. reached an all-time high after the company revealed a major recruitment drive. The recruitment drive is reportedly aimed at strengthen the artificial intelligence capabilities of company.
Meta stock climbed to a peak of $747.90 during trading hours, before closing at $738.09 . It is highest closing figure yet for the company marking a 23% gain for the company so far this year.
The stocks soared as investors responded positively to news that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had put together a new elite “Superintelligence” AI team. The team includes top researchers formerly at OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Meta Hires New AI Chief
Meta’s new Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang announced the list of new hires in a post on X. Wang recently joined Meta through a deal that saw the company invest up to $15 billion for a 49% stake in his data company, ScaleAI.
“I’m excited to be the Chief AI Officer, working alongside [Nat Friedman],” Wang wrote.
Wang said that several other members are joining the team while may have already joined.
“We also have several strong new team members joining today or who have joined in the past few weeks that I’m excited to share as well.”
Meta Appoints Nat Friedman To Lead AI Group
According to reports, Zuckerberg has appointed Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to co-lead the newly formed 50-person AI group.
The team includes several former OpenAI researchers including Trapit Bansal, co-creator of the o-series models. Shuchao Bi who was the co-creator of GPT-4o voice mode and o4-mini has also been hired. Hongyu Ren will be the new lead of a post-training team. Jiahui Yu, who headed OpenAI’s perception team and
Shengjia Zhao who led synthetic data efforts have also been hired.
Talent Wars Heat Up Between AI and Meta
Zuckerberg has been personally involved in recruiting AI talent, according to reports. The reports allege that Mata offered signing bonuses as high as $100 million to attract top minds from OpenAI.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has expressed concern over the departures. The internal discussions at the company suggest leadership is urgently working to retain remaining staff.
Also Read: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Unveils ‘Superintelligence Labs’ Amid AI Talent Battle as Stocks Spike
