Meta is reorganizing its AI work around a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL. The move puts the company’s existing AI teams into one group and gives the effort a clear goal: building AI systems that can perform tasks at or above human level.
The shift also comes with a major hiring push. Meta is bringing in senior figures from AI research, product development and startup leadership, including people connected to OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, GitHub, Scale AI and Safe Superintelligence.
A new home for Meta’s AI teams
MSL is designed to bring Meta’s AI work together rather than leaving it spread across separate groups. The new division includes the creators of the Llama language models, the FAIR research group and product developers.
That structure matters because Meta’s stated aim is not limited to one product or one model release. The group is meant to work on AI systems with broad capability, including new “frontier” models.
Mark Zuckerberg has framed the effort as a long-term investment. According to the source article, he said Meta will invest “hundreds of billions” of dollars over time, and argued that the company has advantages from its massive user base, strong hardware and flexible corporate structure.
The formation of MSL also follows a period in which Meta lost ground to leading model providers with its Llama-4 model. The new division appears connected to that setback, giving Meta a more centralized structure for its next phase of AI development.
Alexandr Wang takes the lead
According to an internal memo cited in the source article, MSL will be led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. Wang becomes Chief AI Officer at Meta.
Zuckerberg described Wang as “the most impressive founder of his generation.” That quote signals how central Wang is expected to be to Meta’s new AI strategy.
Wang is not joining alone. Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO and AI investor, will focus on applied research and AI products. Daniel Gross, Friedman’s longtime business partner, is also joining the MSL leadership team.
Gross was previously CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup founded by OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever. Meta tried and failed to acquire that startup, according to the source article. CNBC reported that Gross is now part of the MSL leadership team and will work with Friedman on applied AI research and product development.
Meta recruits from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic
The leadership changes are only part of the story. Over the past few weeks, Meta has recruited eleven more high-profile AI experts, including several former OpenAI staff.
The list shows how strongly Meta is focusing on people with experience in multimodal models, voice, image generation, perception and advanced AI systems.
- Shuchao Bi, co-developer of the GPT-4o voice mode
- Huiwen Chang, responsible for GPT-4o image generation and former Google Research contributor
- Ji Lin, involved in GPT-4.1, 4.5, and o4-mini
- Hongyu Ren, co-developer of GPT-4o and o3/o4-mini
- Jiahui Yu, co-lead of the multimodal team at OpenAI
- Shengjia Zhao, co-developer of ChatGPT and GPT-4
- Jack Rae, who worked on Gemini and Chinchilla at Google DeepMind
- Pei Sun, who developed perception models for Waymo
- Joel Pobar, who moves from Anthropic back to Meta after more than a decade with the company in the past
- Trapit Bansal from OpenAI
- Johan Schalkwyk from Google
This hiring pattern shows that MSL is not being built only as a research lab or only as a product group. The source article describes a division that includes research, model-building and product development under one roof.
Why the structure matters
The name Meta Superintelligence Labs points to an ambitious target, but the practical change is organizational. Meta is combining its AI talent, model teams and product work into a single division with leadership from both startup and large-company backgrounds.
That may help Meta connect research with products more directly. Friedman and Gross are specifically tied to applied research and AI products, while Wang is taking the broader Chief AI Officer role.
The hiring also reflects competitive pressure in AI talent. In response to Meta’s aggressive recruiting, OpenAI is improving compensation and conditions for its staff, according to the source article.
For Meta, the bet is that more centralized leadership, new hires and long-term investment can help it compete more directly in frontier AI. The company already has Llama, FAIR and product teams; MSL gives those pieces a new shared mandate.
The bigger signal
Meta’s move is not just a staffing update. It is a sign that the company wants to treat superintelligence as a core strategic priority, not a side project inside a broader technology portfolio.
The facts in the source point to three major parts of that strategy: a new division, a leadership team built around Wang, Friedman and Gross, and a wave of hires from some of the most visible organizations in AI.
Whether MSL can deliver the “frontier” models Meta wants is not answered by the announcement itself. What is clear is that Meta is reorganizing around that goal and putting significant people, teams and planned investment behind it.