After trying to buy Ilya Sutskever’s $32B AI startup, Meta looks to hire its CEO

Mark Zuckerberg’s AI talent hiring spree continues. In recent months, Meta tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, the $32 billion AI startup co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, according to a report from CNBC on Thursday.

Sutskever ultimately turned Meta down, according to CNBC, but the company is now in talks to hire Safe Superintelligence’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel Gross. Earlier this week, The Information reported that Meta was in talks to hire Gross, as well as former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Meta is also reportedly taking a stake in Friedman and Gross’s joint venture firm, NFDG, which has invested in prominent AI startups such as Perplexity and Character.AI.

Gross and Friedman could significantly beef up Meta’s AI superintelligence lab, adding leaders who have experience running and investing in AI research labs. Earlier this month, Meta announced that Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and several executives from the data labeling startup, would join the company as well.