Mark Zuckerberg created the world’s biggest social media company in Facebook, before deciding the future lay in the metaverse. Now he’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars to transform Meta again, this time into an AI company. Will it work? Murad Ahmed speaks to FT tech reporters Cristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy about Zuckerberg’s efforts to catch up in the AI race, and whether his vision of ‘personal superintelligence’ will win over consumers. FT articles free to read: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s turbulent bet on AI Meta releases first AI model since Zuckerberg’s spending spree Meta to mine AI interactions to help target advertising Tech Tonic is hosted by Murad Ahmed and produced by Edwin Lane. The executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. Tell us what you think of Tech Tonic! Complete this short survey and you’ll get the chance to win a pair of Bose QuietComfort wireless headphones. Prize draw winners’ surnames and regions may be made available upon request, as required by the Advertising Standards Authority. If you do not want your information to be made available, please email Privacy.Officer@ft.com upon entry. For more information on your rights and how we use your data, please read our Privacy Policy. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI Labs: Zuckerberg’s $100bn gamble

FT Tech Tonic

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** FT Tech Tonic

## Participants

- **Murad Ahmed** (Financial Times)
- **Hannah Murphy** (Financial Times)
- **Cristina Criddle** (Financial Times)

## Transcript

Last summer, Mark Zuckerberg was on the hunt for top AI talent. He decided to transform Meta into an AI company, and he needed the best people to make that happen. Meta was offering massive pay deals to AI researchers, sometimes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But Zuckerberg also had something else up his sleeve.

Let's not forget the homemade soup. My understanding is Mark Zuckerberg taking homemade soup to a person who was unwell. We had reported on that and I will exclusively reveal that I'm 99.9% certain the soup was homemade by Mark himself. That's the FT's Hannah Murphy. According to her reporting, a researcher at OpenAI was weighing a bumper offer from Meta when he fell ill.

Mark Zuckerberg himself turned up on his doorstep, chicken soup in hand. I have a source on this as well. Cristina Criddle also covers AI for the FT in San Francisco. The story I've heard from the OpenAI side is the head of research at OpenAI, Mark Chen, said that Meta had approached nearly half of the people who were reporting directly to them, and that there was this fund for around $10 billion, specifically for talent acquisition.

And he'd heard this soup story that it was handmade soup delivered by Mark Zuckerberg himself. Clearly, when you have that much money on the table, a little bit of food can help to sweeten the deal too. Mark Zuckerberg built the world's biggest social media company. And on top of it, an advertising empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Then he performed one of the biggest pivots in corporate history, deciding that the future of technology lay in the metaverse.

But now he's pivoting again, committing tens of billions to turning Meta into an AI company. It's a huge transformation and a huge gamble. So will Zuckerberg's money and his homemade chicken soup be enough to pull it off? This is Tectonic from the Financial Times. I'm Murad Ahmed, the FT's technology news editor.

A handful of Silicon Valley companies are vying to lead the world in AI. In this season, I've been talking to the FT's expert reporters about each of them. So far, we've assessed the chances of OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI and Google DeepMind. In this final episode in the season, can Mark Zuckerberg's billions win him a place at AI's top table?

To talk about Mark Zuckerberg's AI ambitions at Meta, I spoke toCristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy. I started by asking Hannah about Meta's latest pivot. Given how serious Zuckerberg seemed about the metaverse just a few years ago, how serious was he now about turning Meta into an AI company? I mean, it was already a fairly dramatic turn of events when in 2021, I think it was,

Mark renamed the company Meta, announced this long-term vision of becoming a metaverse company and tens of billions of dollars being invested into ...

AI Labs: Zuckerberg’s $100bn gamble

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

AI Labs: Zuckerberg’s $100bn gamble

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.