Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has assembled a high-level team to pursue his goal of developing an unmatched artificial intelligence (AI). He revealed a major restructuring of the company’s AI operations in his push toward what he describes as “superintelligence”—AI that could surpass human capabilities.

Zuckerberg informed employees that a newly established division called Meta Superintelligence Labs will be led by former Scale AI CEO, Alexandr Wang. The 28-year-old Wang joined Meta after Zuckerberg invested nearly USD 15 billion to acquire a 49% stake in the startup.

“As AI development accelerates, the path toward superintelligence is becoming clearer,” said Zuckerberg in an internal message to employees, first reported by Bloomberg.

“I believe this marks the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I’m fully committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure Meta leads the way,” he added, as quoted by NY Post via detikINET.

Zuckerberg stated that Wang, now appointed as Chief AI Officer, is the founder of the most impressive startup of his generation. Wang will work closely with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who will be responsible for overseeing AI product development and applied research.

Thanks to the success of Scale AI, Alexandr Wang’s net worth has reached approximately USD 3.6 billion—about IDR 58 trillion—according to Forbes, making him one of the world’s richest young entrepreneurs.

News of Meta’s creation of a supercharged AI team sent its stock soaring. Investors pushed the share price of Facebook and Instagram’s parent company to an all-time high of USD 747.90 before settling at a record closing of USD 738.09 per share.

Meta is currently in tight competition with companies like Google and OpenAI in the race to develop advanced AI. Zuckerberg favors open-source AI models, which are freely accessible to the public, whereas Google and OpenAI rely on closed-source systems.

In his internal memo, Zuckerberg also confirmed that Meta had successfully hired four researchers from OpenAI: Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Shengjia Zhao, and Hongyu Ren.

In addition, OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal—one of the primary contributors to OpenAI’s first reasoning model, o1—has also joined Meta. In total, Zuckerberg announced 11 new hires, including former employees from Google and Anthropic.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly voiced concerns about Zuckerberg’s recruitment approach. On a podcast, he claimed that the Facebook founder had offered signing bonuses of up to USD 100 million in a bid to lure OpenAI’s top talent.