Meta Poaches Top Talent From Google, Sesame For Advanced AI Lab

Meta Platforms has poached top engineers from multiple tech firms, including Alphabet’s Google, for a new team focused on achieving a more advanced form of artificial intelligence (AI) called artificial general intelligence.

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SAN FRANCISCO —

Dr. Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, is expected to join Meta’s “superintelligence” team, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Meta has also recruited Mr. Johan Schalkwyk, a machine learning lead at AI voice start-up Sesame AI, other people said.

Mr. Alexandr Wang, co-founder and chief executive of Scale AI, is also expected to be part of the team after Meta finalises a multibillion-dollar investment in the data labeling start-up that could be announced as soon as this week.

The new group is part of an ambitious and costly effort by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to gain ground on rivals like Google and OpenAI after he was frustrated by the poor reception to the company’s latest AI offering, Llama 4.