Meta spends $15 billion to hire 28-year-old AI founder

Mark Zuckerberg’s latest bold moves might redefine the AI arms race.

Meta has spent a staggering $15 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI, a company founded by 28-year-old Alexandr Wang.

As part of the agreement, Alexandr Wang will join Meta to lead its new superintelligence unit, a major shift in the tech giant’s AI strategy.

Meta confirmed the partnership on Thursday, saying, “We will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models, and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts.”

Scale AI will be valued at $29 billion as part of the deal. While officially framed as a strategic partnership, many analysts believe this is nothing more than an expensive acquihire, a way for Meta to secure Wang’s expertise as it scrambles to catch up with OpenAI and Google.

Tech giants have long been known for their aggressive talent acquisitions. Microsoft paid $650 million to AI startup Inflection just to hire its founder, Mustafa Suleyman, while Google shelled out $2.7 billion for Character. AI, primarily to bring Noam Shazeer on board. But Meta’s move dwarfs them all, signaling its desperation to regain dominance in the AI space.

Meta’s AI ambitions have lagged behind competitors. Its latest model, Llama 4, failed to impress and Zuckerberg is now personally recruiting top AI minds, offering nine-figure salaries to lure talent.

Meta’s gamble could either propel it to the forefront of AI innovation or go down as one of the most expensive hiring mistakes in tech history. Either way, the stakes have never been higher.