How Mark Zuckerberg is secretly building ‘AI start-up’ inside Meta that investors, and even insiders, have little clue about

Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly creating a highly secretive, startup-like unit dedicated to advanced AI research within Meta, a report has said. The strange thing about this strategy is that it has largely remained under wraps from investors and many company insiders. This bold move comes as Meta overhauls its AI strategy, with Zuckerberg reportedly offering nine-figure sign-on bonuses to poach top artificial intelligence talent from industry rivals like OpenAI, Apple and Google.Citing sources familiar with Zuckerberg's vision, the Financial Times reported that the CEO aims at fostering a bureaucracy-free environment for developing ‘cutting-edge AI’, all while being backed by Meta's capital. The unit is said to operate from a separate workspace at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters, deliberately isolated from the company's existing AI efforts.Zuckerberg has reportedly met new team members personally as they’ve joined in recent weeks. The lab is reportedly being led by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, and Nat Friedman, the former GitHub boss.The secrecy surrounding the lab's work, including its vision and budget, has left investors and even many insiders with limited insight. This comes as Meta reportedly prepares to announce its slowest profit growth in two years during its second-quarter earnings report on Wednesday.One individual close to the lab noted that a clear strategy hasn't even been shared with the team itself, emphasising its walled-off nature within Meta. Zuckerberg announced a new organisation called Meta Superintelligence Labs in June, which is made up of top AI researchers and engineers. Recently, Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.This isn’t the first time that Zuckerberg is aggressive towards a major technological gamble. At the peak of the 2022 digital asset boom, he rebranded the company to “Meta,” signaling his commitment to the costly and ultimately loss-making pursuit of building an avatar-filled "metaverse."