What Zuckerberg’s New AI Team is Good At

In recent weeks, Meta Platforms has probably generated more buzz from hiring two executives and 14 artificial intelligence researchers—mostly from OpenAI—than from its prior AI efforts altogether. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday officially announced 11 of those researcher hires as part of a new organization, Meta Superintelligence Labs.

The names might not ring a bell to most readers. But given how the market for AI talent has intensified recently, these people will likely cost Meta hundreds of millions of dollars in sign-on bonuses, cash salaries and equity compensation. And just bringing on Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to lead the team effectively cost Zuckerberg billions of dollars.

So who are these people and what can they do for Meta?