Meta's AI Talent Hunt: Former GitHub CEO and Safe Superintelligence Co-Founder in Talks to Join

Meta in talks to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to join AI efforts, The Information reports

June 18 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab is in talks to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to join the Facebook parent's AI efforts, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The social media giant is also in discussion with Daniel Gross, Friedman's partner in the investment fund NFDG, about joining the company to work on AI, the report added. Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company is also in talks to partially buy out NFDG, the report said. Big tech companies are doubling down on AI partnerships and investment to stay ahead in the race for dominance. Meta announced a $14.8 billion investment in Scale AI last week, its second-largest investment to date. The company hired Scale AI CEO, Alexandr Wang, to work with Meta and lead its new superintelligence unit. Friedman is part of Meta's Advisory Group, an external advisory council established by the company to provide guidance on technology and product development. Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Meta tried to buy Ilya Sutskever's $32 billion AI startup, but is now planning to hire its CEO

At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses. When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poached Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang last week as part of a $14.3 billion investment in the artificial intelligence startup, he was apparently just getting started. Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree has now turned to Daniel Gross, the CEO of Ilya Sutskever's startup Safe Superintelligence, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. It's not how Zuckerberg planned for a deal to go down. Earlier this year, sources said, Meta tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, which was reportedly valued at $32 billion in a fundraising round in April. Sutskever, who just launched the startup a year ago, shortly after leaving OpenAI, rebuffed Meta's efforts, as well as the company's attempt to hire him, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the information is confidential. Soon after those talks ended, Zuckerberg started negotiating with Gross the sources said. In addition to his role at Safe Superintelligence, Gross runs a venture capital firm with Gross called NFDG, their combined initials. Both men are joining Meta as part of the transaction, and will work on products under Wang, one source said. Meta, meanwhile, will get a stake in NFDG, according to multiple sources. The Information was first to report on Meta's plans to hire Gross and Friedman. Gross, Friedman and Sutskever didn't respond to CNBC's requests for comment. A Meta spokesperson said the company "will share more about our superintelligence effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks." Zuckerberg's aggressive hiring tactics escalate an AI talent war that's reached new heights of late. Meta, Google and OpenAI, along with a host of other big companies and high-valued startups, are racing to develop the most powerful large language models, and pushing towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that's considered equal to or greater than human intelligence. Last week, Meta agreed to pump $14.3 billion into Scale AI to bring on Wang and a few other top engineers while getting a 49% stake in the startup. Altman said on the latest episode of the "Uncapped" podcast, which is hosted by his brother, that Meta has tried to lure OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages. Altman said "none of our best people have decided to take them up on that." "I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor," Atlman said on the podcast. "Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things." Meta didn't respond to a request for comment on Altman's remarks. OpenAI, for its part, has gone to similar lengths, paying about $6.5 billion to hire iPhone designer Jony Ive and to acquire his nascent devices startup io. Elsewhere, the founders of AI startup Character.AI were recruited back to Google last year in a multibillion-dollar deal, while DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman was brought on by Microsoft in a $650 million purchase of talent from Inflection AI. In Gross, Zuckerberg is getting a longtime entrepreneur and AI investor. Gross founded the search engine Cue, which was acquired by Apple in 2013. He was a top executive at Apple and helped lead machine learning efforts and the development of Siri. He was later a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, before co‑founding Safe Superintelligence alongside Sutskever. Friedman co-founded two startups before becoming the CEO of GitHub following Microsoft's acquisition of the code-sharing platform in 2018. NFDG has backed Coinbase, Figma, CoreWeave, Perplexity and Character.ai over the years, according to Pitchbook. It's unclear what happens to its investment portfolio in a Meta deal, a source said.

Meta in Advanced Talks to Hire SSI Co-Founder Daniel Gross, Reports Reveal | AIM

Meta is in advanced talks to hire prominent AI investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to help lead its artificial intelligence efforts, according to a recent report by The Information. As part of the negotiations, Meta is discussing a partial buyout of its venture capital fund, NFDG, which holds stakes in top AI startups. The fund, worth billions of dollars on paper, could cost Meta over $1 billion to buy out. If the deal is successful, Gross, who co-founded Safe Superintelligence (SSI) with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, would leave the startup to join Meta. At Meta, Gross is expected to focus primarily on AI products, while Friedman's role is anticipated to be broader. Both Friedman and Gross are AI investors and have been involved in leading companies. They work closely with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in a $14.3 billion deal. Friedman was the CEO of GitHub (acquired by Microsoft) and is now an investor and advisor, particularly through his venture fund NFDG. As per the report, he has also been consulting with Meta on its AI strategy since 2014. In addition to the buyout, Meta is negotiating the purchase of a substantial portion of NFDG's holdings, gaining minority stakes in the startups backed by the fund, such as SSI, but without gaining control or access to sensitive information about these companies. Meta has been aggressively pursuing top AI talent. In a recent podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta is offering $100 million signing bonuses to attract talent. He also added that none of their top people have accepted those offers yet.

Report: Meta targets former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to boost its AI research efforts - SiliconANGLE

Report: Meta targets former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to boost its AI research efforts Meta Platforms Inc. is reportedly looking to expand its artificial intelligence team with yet another high profile tech industry luminary in the shape of former GitHub Chief Executive Nat Friedman. The parent company of Facebook is also said to be angling to bring aboard Daniel Gross, who is Friendman's partner in the AI-focused venture capital fund NFDG. The discussions were first reported by The Information, which cites anonymous sources familiar with the matter as saying Meta also wants to purchase a stake in the investment firm, which has backed a number of well-known AI startups. Friedman (pictured) is a big name in Silicon Valley circles, having been handed the CEO role at GitHub some time after the company was acquired by Microsoft Corp. for $7.5 billion in June 2018. The then-Microsoft Corporate Vice President took over as GitHub's leader in October 2019, and led the company for just over two years, during which time he helped to grow its value to an estimated $16.5 billion. During his tenure, Friedman helped to establish GitHub as a pioneer in AI with the launch of GitHub Copilot, which is one of the earliest and most successful coding assistants, leveraging generative AI to complete lines of code and make suggestions for programmers. He departed GitHub in November 2021 to focus on investments at NFDG. As for Gross, he previously co-founded a personal assistant app called Cue, before joining Apple Inc. in 2013 after the iPhone maker acquired the startup for around $50 million. At Apple, he worked on a number of AI projects, before leaving to co-found the developer tooling startup Safe Superintelligence Inc.. Friedman and Gross have worked together at NFDG for some years already, where they focus on identifying hot AI startups and investing anywhere between $1 million to $100 million in seed and growth rounds. NFDG has backed some notable companies over the years, including the payments firm Stripe Inc., the generative AI chatbot builder Character Technologies Inc., the machine learning operations company Weights and Biases Inc. and the AI search engine firm Perplexity AI Inc. The Information didn't specify in its report exactly what Friedman and Gross would be doing at Meta, but Reuters reports that the former GitHub boss is currently a member of the company's Advisory Group, which is an external advisory council that was established to give it independent guidance and technology and product development. In recent weeks, Meta has been scrambling to sign up more talent in an effort to bolster its flagging efforts in the AI industry. The company has invested billions of dollars into research and development in an attempt to keep pace with the likes of OpenAI and Google. Although it has had success with its open-source Llama LLM models, few people have described Meta as being ahead of its rivals. Its latest Llama models have only had a lukewarm reception, and it has reportedly come unstuck in its efforts to improve on them. Last week, Meta paid a reported $14.3 billion to acquire the AI training startup Scale AI Inc., in a deal which also secured the services of its former CEO Alexandr Wang. The company reportedly targeted Wang specifically to lead its new AI research lab, which is focused on developing "artificial general intelligence" that can match or surpass the capabilities of humans. Meta has also been trying to poach top AI talent from companies including OpenAI and Google LLC's DeepMind, offering compensation packages that include $100 million signing bonuses. That's according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said Meta made such an offer to one of its chief researchers, Noam Brown, only to be turned down. "[Meta has] started making these, like, giant offers to a lot of people on our team," Altman said in a podcast this week. "You know, like, $100 million signing bonuses, more than that [in] compensation per year [...] I'm really happy that, at least so far, none of our best people have decided to take him up on that." Altman speculated that his employees turned down Meta because they believe that his company has a better chance of achieving AGI first, and will one day become much more valuable than the social media giant.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Reportedly Looking To Hire Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman And Investor Daniel Gross As Part Of Aggressive AI Expansion Strategy - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta Platforms, Inc. META is reportedly looking to bring high-profile AI talent in-house as it doubles down on its efforts to lead the next wave of artificial intelligence innovation. What Happened: Meta is in discussions to hire Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, to support its artificial intelligence efforts, reported Reuters (via The Information). The company is also reportedly in talks with Daniel Gross, Friedman's partner at investment fund NFDG, about a potential AI-related role. Meta is also considering a partial acquisition of NFDG, the report said. The move would further integrate top-tier AI talent and resources into the company's growing portfolio. Also Read: Meta Hits 1 Billion Monthly AI Users, Eyes Future With Subscriptions Friedman currently serves on Meta's Advisory Group, an external council that advises the company on technology and product development. Why It's Important: Earlier this week, during a podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta offered $100 million compensation packages to lure top AI talent from his company and Google DeepMind. Previously, it was also reported that Meta is struggling with a wave of departures from its AI division, as more employees head to competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Meanwhile, Meta has made a strategic minority investment in Scale AI, pushing the startup's valuation beyond $29 billion. As part of the deal, Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang will join Meta to assist with its AI initiatives while continuing to serve on Scale's board. Price Action: Meta shares are up 16.11% year-to-date. On Wednesday, the stock dipped 0.21% during regular trading and edged down another 0.062% after hours, as per Benzinga Pro. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show META maintaining an upward trajectory across short, medium and long-term timeframes. Additional performance data is available here. Photo courtesy: Skorzewiak / Shutterstock.com Read Next: Cathie Wood Dumps Palantir As Stock Touches Peak Prices, Bails On Soaring Flying-Taxi Maker Archer Aviation Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. METAMeta Platforms Inc$695.34-0.27%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum85.39Growth92.68Quality89.97Value26.81Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Report: Meta Aims to Hire AI Investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The company aims to have Friedman and Gross help lead its AI efforts, The Information reported Wednesday (June 18), citing unnamed sources. Meta did not immediately reply to PYMNTS' request for comment. According to the report, NFDG has invested in AI startups like Perplexity, The Bot Company and Safe Superintelligence. If Meta partially buys out the VC fund, the company would have minority stakes in the startups but would not get information about them, the report said. Gross, in addition to his involvement with the venture capital fund, is a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence. If he joins Meta, he would leave that position, the report said. Friedman is a member of an advisory group that consults with Meta executives about the company's AI efforts, per the report.

Meta in talks to buy out AI venture fund for over $1 bln- The Information By Investing.com

Investing.com-- Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to partially buy out an artificial intelligence venture fund run by investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross for over $1 billion, The Information reported on Wednesday. The deal will also see Meta (NASDAQ:META) hire the two, the report said, citing a personal familiar with the matter. Friedman is the former CEO of coding database GitHub, while Gross is the co-founder of Safe Superintelligence. The two run the investment fund NFDG, which holds stakes in several major AI and technology startups, including Stripe, Character AI, and Perplexity. The Information report comes as Meta attempts to further bolster its AI staff, with the company having last week announced a $14.8 billion investment in Scale AI, while also hiring founder Alexandr Wang. Other reports showed Meta was also seeking to poach employees from OpenAI, as the company races to gain an edge over its rivals in the fast-growing AI industry. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was seen personally assembling a team aimed at creating artificial general intelligence, a theoretical but widely sought-after form of AI that has cognitive and reasoning capabilities on par with humans.

Meta in talks to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to join AI efforts, The Information reports

(Reuters) -Meta Platforms is in talks to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to join the Facebook parent's AI efforts, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The social media giant is also in discussion with Daniel Gross, Friedman's partner in the investment fund NFDG, about joining the company to work on AI, the report added. Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company is also in talks to partially buy out NFDG, the report said. Big tech companies are doubling down on AI partnerships and investment to stay ahead in the race for dominance. Meta announced a $14.8 billion investment in Scale AI last week, its second-largest investment to date. The company hired Scale AI CEO, Alexandr Wang, to work with Meta and lead its new superintelligence unit. Friedman is part of Meta's Advisory Group, an external advisory council established by the company to provide guidance on technology and product development. (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

Meta wanted to buy OpenAI co-founder's startup but settled for hiring its CEO: Report

Both new hires will work under Scale AI's Alexandr Wang at Meta. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence lately, and his latest hires are a testament to this. After investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI last week and bringing on its founder Alexandr Wang, Zuckerberg has now reportedly brought two prominent figures onboard: Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. Daniel Gross is the CEO of Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup launched by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. According to CNBC, Meta had earlier tried to buy Safe Superintelligence, which was reportedly valued at around $32 billion in a fundraising round in April. However, Sutskever turned down both the acquisition offer and Meta's attempt to hire him. After that deal failed, Meta reportedly shifted focus to hiring Gross. Along with Gross, Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO and Gross's business partner at venture firm NFDG, is also joining Meta. According to the report, both Gross and Friedman will work under Wang at Meta, and the tech giant is also said to get a stake in NFDG. Also read: Microsoft eyes more job cuts as it shifts focus to AI and data centers Meta would be sharing more information about its superintelligence efforts and the new team members in the coming weeks. Meta's move is part of the AI hiring battle between top tech companies like Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. These companies are racing to build powerful AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said on a podcast that Meta offered huge signing bonuses of $100 million to lure people from his company, although none of his top employees have accepted the offers so far. Meta's hiring spree isn't the only big move in the AI world. OpenAI itself paid $6.5 billion to bring in iPhone designer Jony Ive and buy his startup. Google and Microsoft have also made major hires and acquisitions to strengthen their AI teams.