Mark Zuckerberg's Meta assembles AI dream team after poaching top talents from Google, Sesame

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta assembles AI dream team after poaching top talents from Google, Sesame

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta assembles AI dream team after poaching top talents from Google, Sesame ByHT News Desk Jun 12, 2025 11:20 AM IST Read this news in brief form Share Via Copy Link The new poaching initiative is part of Mark Zuckerberg’s larger strategy to compete with AI leaders like OpenAI and Google.

Meta Platforms Inc. has poached top engineers from leading tech firms, including Google and Sesame AI, as part of its new team focused on building advanced artificial intelligence systems.

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif(AP)

According to a Bloomberg report, Jack Rae, a senior researcher from Google DeepMind, is set to join Meta’s newly formed “superintelligence” group.

Meta has also recruited Johan Schalkwyk, a machine learning expert from voice AI startup Sesame AI, as per sources familiar with the matter who requested anonymity.

Apart from that, Alexandr Wang, CEO and co-founder of data labeling company Scale AI, is expected to be involved in the project. The 28-year-old, Scale CEO, is considered an influential figure in the AI space and has built strong connections in Washington. Meta is also reportedly close to finalising a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI, which could be announced this week.

The initiative is part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s larger strategy to compete with AI leaders like OpenAI and Google. He is hoping the newly assembled dream team will enhance Meta’s AI tools—particularly its language model Llama 4. 

The aim is to help the company develop more powerful systems for speech recognition and personalized AI features, particularly artificial general intelligence (AGI).

To attract top talent, Meta is offering generous compensation packages reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars over several years, including stock options.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the new hires, when reached out by Bloomberg. Jack Rae confirmed his departure from Google for Meta but did not provide further details. Schalkwyk has not responded to media requests.

The news agency reported that Zuckerberg has personally reached out to potential recruits and even met with some at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto. The company plans to bring together about 50 members for the new team, including a chief scientist to lead the group.

“There are very few people globally who can do those type of large AI trainings very, very efficiently,” said Vahan Petrosyan, co-founder of AI platform SuperAnnotate. “For that reason, higher pay packages may make sense for companies like Meta.”

However, not everyone is accepting Meta’s offers. At least one top researcher from a major AI lab turned down Zuckerberg’s proposal, according to a source.

Meanwhile, competitors are also working to keep their top AI experts. Google has promoted Koray Kavukcuoglu, a leading figure in AI, to a new role as Chief AI Architect. 

In an internal memo, CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Koray will help to accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products, with the goal of more seamless integration, faster iteration, and greater efficiency.”

Google has not yet responded to requests for comment from Bloomberg yet.

(Based on Bloomberg inputs)