Zuckerberg forms elite AI team to catch up with competitors

Summary

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally assembling a new team of experts to close the gap in artificial intelligence development. According to a Bloomberg report, Zuckerberg plans to recruit about 50 people for the internal “Superintelligence Group,” including a new head for AI research.

Zuckerberg is conducting most of the personnel interviews himself. In recent weeks, he met with AI researchers, infrastructure engineers, and entrepreneurs at his private homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto. At the Menlo Park headquarters, he had workspaces restructured so the new team could sit in close proximity to his office.

Setbacks with Llama 4 and “Behemoth” drive reorganization

Bloomberg reports that the creation of this specialized team is a direct response to Zuckerberg’s dissatisfaction with Meta’s Llama 4 language model, released in April, which unexpectedly fell significantly behind the competition. Additionally, questionable benchmark results from a variant specialized for LLM Arena did not match the published version.

According to Bloomberg, the model was also criticized internally as overambitious and underperforming. The “Behemoth” model, originally planned for this year, was postponed because it did not offer sufficient progress over earlier versions.

These setbacks led to Zuckerberg’s decision to become much more involved in the AI strategy. Bloomberg reports that he is currently in a “founder mode” and is showing an increasingly directive leadership style. A WhatsApp chat named “Recruiting Party,” where executives discuss potential candidates around the clock, is used to coordinate recruitment efforts.

Multi-billion investment in Scale AI as strategic lever

Alongside team building, Meta is planning to invest over ten billion dollars in the US startup Scale AI. The company offers data services for AI training and develops customized AI applications for businesses and government agencies. According to Bloomberg, Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is expected to join and lead the Superintelligence Group after the transaction is completed. Spokespersons for both companies declined to comment.

The planned investment is considered the largest external investment in Meta’s history and could provide a decisive advantage in accessing high-quality training data and scalable infrastructure.

Superintelligence Group and Meta AI

Zuckerberg emphasized to potential new hires that Meta doesn’t need external funding rounds thanks to stable advertising revenue. The company can build its own multi-gigawatt data center infrastructure – one of the most powerful in the world. Meta has already earmarked tens of billions of dollars for AI projects in 2025. According to Zuckerberg, this will amount to “hundreds of billions” in the coming years.

Bloomberg reports that it’s currently unclear how exactly the new Superintelligence Group will relate to existing AI teams at Meta AI. Some current employees are expected to transfer to the new unit. Notably, Meta’s AI chief scientist Yann LeCun doesn’t feature in the rumors. LeCun is a prominent critic of generative AI systems, which he considers a dead end on the path to human-like intelligence. He is developing an alternative approach at Meta with JEPA. The company is thus pursuing a dual-track strategy for the future.