Meta Is Building A New ‘SuperIntelligence’ AI Lab

Meta is building a new dedicated AI Lab to pursue “superintelligence,” also known as artificial superintelligence (ASI), a technology that surpasses human capabilities. Alexandr Wang, Scale AI’s founder and CEO, is expected to join the project after the acquisition deal is done.

On Monday, it was revealed that Meta is planning to acquire Scale AI and is offering around $10 billion for the company, the largest private-sector investment in history. With Scale AI, Meta expects to expand its AI efforts and build an advanced AI team to gain an advantage against competitors such as Google and OpenAI in the AI race.

According to the New York Times, four sources familiar with the matter explained that the new AI Lab is part of Meta’s reorganization process as some products haven’t worked as expected, and recent changes in the workforce.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, expects to turn the company into an AI powerhouse, and is pushing the development of AI products such as the latest smart glasses and Meta AI. In February, Zuckerberg described AI as “potentially one of the most important innovations in history” and emphasized that 2025 is a crucial year for its development.

Meta wants to explore “superintelligence,” considered a futuristic goal by leading researchers. This technology, hypothetically, goes beyond Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), as its potential could be more powerful than machines that can perform as well as humans.

Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, is in charge of Meta’s research efforts. The expert is also a New York University professor and won the Turing Award in 2018. However, Dr. LeCun considers AGI a lofty goal that needs new ideas.

Meta’s recent efforts in AI development have not been as advanced as its competitors, but its open-source model Llama—a strategy to encourage worldwide adoption of its model—is used by over 1 billion people every month.

According to Reuters, Zuckerberg expects to personally hire 50 new talents to join the new AI lab soon, in part driven by his frustration with not meeting expectations with the latest model, Llama 4.