Meta held talks to buy Thinking Machines, Perplexity, and Safe Superintelligence
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively acquiring AI startups, including Safe Superintelligence (SSI), Thinking Machines Lab, and Perplexity.
- The talks with these companies did not progress to a formal offer stage due to disagreements over deal prices and strategy.
- Zuckerberg is assembling a new Meta AI team, led by Alexandr Wang, which will include SSI co-founder Daniel Gross and ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman as co-leaders.
- The team is expected to be unveiled as soon as next week, with Wang continuing to recruit top talent for the new AI effort.
- Wang’s hiring spree comes after Zuckerberg paid over $14 billion to quickly hire him from Scale, a company he previously led.
At this point, it’s becoming easier to say which AI startups Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t looked at acquiring.
In addition to Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (SSI), sources tell me the Meta CEO recently discussed buying ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab and Perplexity, the AI-native Google rival. None of these talks progressed to the formal offer stage for various reasons, including disagreements over deal prices and strategy, but together they illustrate how aggressively Zuckerberg has been canvassing the industry to reboot his AI efforts.
Now, details about the team Zuckerberg is assembling are starting to come into view: SSI co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross, along with ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman, are poised to co-lead the Meta AI assistant. Both men will report to Alexandr Wang, the former Scale CEO Zuckerberg just paid over $14 billion to quickly hire. Wang told his Scale team goodbye last Friday and was in the Meta office on Monday. This week, he has been meeting with top Meta leaders (more on that below) and continuing to recruit for the new AI team Zuckerberg has tasked him with building. I expect the team to be unveiled as soon as next week.
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