Meta held talks to buy thinking machines, perplexity and safe superintelligence

At this point, it becomes easier to say what IA startups Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t looked at the acquisition.

In addition to ILYA STSKEVER Sure superintelligence (SSI), sources tell me that the meta-PDG has recently discussed the ex-openai cto purchase Mira Murati Thinking laboratory And perplexity, the Rival Google Ai-Native. None of these discussions have progressed towards the official offer phase for various reasons, including disagreements on prices and the strategy of the agreement, but together, they illustrate how Zuckerberg has aggressively Salling on industry To restart its AI efforts.

Now, the details of the team that Zuckerberg are gathering begin to appear: the co-founder and CEO of SSI Daniel Gross, With the old CEO of GitHub Nat Friedman, The Meta Ai assistant are about to co-drive. The two men will relate to Alexandr WangThe old CEO of the Zuckerberg scale I just paid more than $ 14 billion to hire quickly. Wang said on his goodbye team last Friday and was in the Meta Office on Monday. This week, he met the best meta-leaders (more about it below) and continued to recruit for the new AI team, Zuckerberg has responsible for building it. I expect the team to be unveiled next week.

Rather than joining Meta, Sutskever, Murati and CEO of perplexity Aravind Srinivas have all continued to collect more money for higher assessments. Sutskever, a titan of the AI ​​research community that co -founded Openai, recently high A few billion dollars for SSI. Meta and Google are investors in her business, I am told. Murati too just raised A few billion dollars. Neither she nor Sutskever is about to release a product. Srinivas, on the other hand, is in the breeding process About $ 500 million for perplexity.

Spokesperson for all the companies involved have refused to comment or did not respond in time for publication. Information And CNBC Zuckerberg talks first reported with a safe superintendent, while Bloomberg First reported the perplexity talks.

Although Zuckerberg’s recruitment campaign is motivated by the urgency he feels to set the META AI strategy, the situation also highlights fierce competition for the best talents of AI these days. In my conversations this week, those inside the industry are not surprised by Zuckerberg who makes nine -digit remuneration offers – or even, yes, 10 digits for the best AI talents. There are some seniors in Openai, for example, which are already remunerated in this stage, thanks to the dazzling increase in the evaluation company in recent years.

Speaking of Openai, it is clear that the CEO Sam Altman is at least a little shaken by Zuckerberg’s hiring frenzy. His decision to appear on his brother’s podcast This week and say that “none of our best people” leaves for Meta was probably supposed to transmit a position of strength, but in reality, it seems that he launches his former colleagues under the bus. I was confused by Altman’s suggestion that the meta-payment in advance for talents “does not set up a great culture”. After all, I didn’t open Just pay $ 6.5 billion to hire Jony IVE And his small team of equipment?

“We believe that glasses are the best form factor for AI”

When I joined a call to zoom with Alex HimelMeta’s portable vice-president this week he had just made a call with the new head of the Zuckerberg AI, Alexandr Wang.

“There are an increasing number of Alexes to whom I speak regularly,” joked Himel when we start our conversation on Meta New glasses go out with Oakley. “I was just in my first meeting with him. There were three people in a room with the camera really far away, and I said to myself: “Who is talking about right now?” And then I said to myself: “Oh, hey, it’s Alex.” “”

The following questions and answers were published for duration and clarity:

How did your meeting with Alex go?

The meeting concerned the way of making AI as impressive as possible for glasses. Obviously, there are unique use cases in glasses that are not things you do on a phone. What we are trying to understand is how to balance all of this, because AI can be everything for everyone or it could be incredible for more specific use cases.

We try to understand how to find the right balance because there are a ton of things in the underlying Llama models and all this pipeline that does not care about the glasses. Then there are things that we really care, like an egocentric view and trying to feed the video in the models to help with some of the truly ambitious use cases that we would not build otherwise.

You refer to this new range with Oakley as “Gernes Ai”. Is this the new brand in this category? These are AI glasses, not smart glasses?

We call the category like AI glasses. You saw Orion. You used longer than anyone in demofor which I congratulate you. We used to think that that was what you needed to hit the scale of this new category. You needed the large field of visualization and the display to superimpose virtual content. Our opinion on this subject has definitely changed. We think we can reach a scale faster, and AI is the reason why we think it is possible.

Currently, the two best use cases for glasses are audio – telephone calls, music, podcasts – and take photos and videos. We examine the participation rates of our active users, and these have been one and two since the launch. Audio is one. A very close second is the photos and the videos.

The AI ​​has been number three from the start. As we have launched more markets – we are now in 18 years – and we have added more features, the ramp. Our greatest investment on a mile side software is the functionality of the AI, because we think that glasses are the best form factor for AI. They are something that you are already carrying all the time. They can see what you see. They can hear what you hear. They are super accessible.

Your goal for AI to replace the audio and the photo is the most used feature for glasses, or isn’t it that you think about it?

From a mathematics point of view, at best, you can link. We want AI to be more and more used by more people more frequently. We think there is certainly room for the audio to improve. There is certainly room for image quality to improve. The AI ​​thing has much more margin.

What part of AI is on board glasses compared to the cloud? I imagine you have a lot of physical constraints with this type of device.

We now have a billion parameter models that can work on the frame. So, more and more, there are things there. Then we have matters on the phone on the phone.

If you looked at WWDC, Apple has made a few announcements that we have not yet had the chance to test, but we are delighted. One is the APIs aware of Wi-Fi. We should be able to transfer photos and videos without people typing this boring dialog box each time. It would be great. The second was the background access of the processor, which should allow us to do an image processing when you transfer the supports. Synchronization would work as it does on Android.

Do you think that the market for these new Oakley glasses will be as big as Rays rays? Or is it no more niche because they are more outside and focused on athletes?

We work with Essilorluxottica, which is an excellent partner. Ray-Ban is their biggest brand. In this case, the most popular style is Wayfair. When we launched the original Ray-Ban glasses, we went with the most popular style for the most popular brand.

Their second largest brand is Oakley. Many people wear them. The Holbrook is really popular. The HSTN, which is what we are launching, is a truly popular analog framework. We see more and more people using Ray-Ban meta-lunes for active use cases. This is our first step in the performance category. There is more to come.

What is your reaction to Google’s ads on E / S for their XR Glasses platform and their glasses partnerships?

We have been working with Essilorluxottica for five years now. It is long for a partnership. It takes a while to be really synchronized. I feel very well in the state of our partnership. We are able to work quickly. The Meta Grasses Oakley are the fastest program we have had a little. It took less than nine months.

I thought the demos they (google) were quite good were quite good. I thought that some of them were quite convincing. They have not announced a product, so I cannot react specifically to what they do. It is flattering that people see the traction we get and that we also want to jump.

On the front of AR glasses, what have you learned from Orion now that you have shown it to the outside world?

We went at full speed on this. We have actually reached very good internal milestones for the next version, which is the one we plan to sell. The greatest learning of their use is that we feel more and more good in the entry and interaction model with the monitoring of the eyes and the neuronal band. I wore mine during March Madness to the office. I literally watched the matches. Imagine sitting at a table with a virtual television just above people’s heads. It was incredible.

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