Meta is in acquisition talks with a number of AI startups, including Perplexity AI and Thinking Machines Lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly in talks to acquire several AI startups, including Thinking Machines Lab, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.

Meta talks held to buy Thinking Machines, Perplexity, and Safe Superintelligence | The Verge

According to multiple reports, Zuckerberg has approached several AI startups, including Murati's Thinking Machines Lab, Perplexity AI, which provides an AI search engine, and Safe Superintelligence, an AI company founded by Ilya Satskiver, former chief scientist at OpenAI, about acquiring the company.

Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Satskivar launches AI company Safe Superintelligence (SSI) - GIGAZINE

According to sources, these negotiations did not progress to the formal offer stage for various reasons, including differences in opinion on the transaction price and strategy. Regarding the active acquisition negotiations, technology media The Verge reported that 'both of these indicate that Zuckerberg is researching the industry in order to restructure his AI business.'

Meta is focused on developing its own open source AI, Llama, and is reportedly working with SSI co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman on a new AI assistant.

Meta announces large-scale language model 'LLaMA', which can run on a single GPU while rivaling GPT-3 - GIGAZINE

The two are expected to become co-leaders of the Meta AI assistant team, and their direct superior will be Alexander Wang, a former Scale AI employee who Meta hired after investing more than $14 billion (about 2 trillion yen). Wang has just said goodbye to the Scale AI team and arrived at Meta's office, and is scheduled to meet with Meta's top leaders and lead the new AI team, according to The Verge.

Meta plans to build an AI lab led by Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang specializing in the pursuit of 'superintelligence,' and offers hundreds of millions to tens of billions of yen in compensation to lure AI researchers from OpenAI and Google - GIGAZINE