Mark Zuckerberg announces creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Read the memo

• Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be run by some of his company's most recent hires,
• The new AI superintelligence project, led by execs including Scale AI ex-CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, will house various teams working on foundation models.
• Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring blitz as he faces fierce competition from rivals like OpenAI and Google.

Mark Zuckerbergsaid on Monday that he's creating Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by some of his company's most recent hires, including Scale AI ex-CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Zuckerberg said the new AI superintelligence unit, MSL, will house the company's various teams working on foundation models, like the open-source Llama software, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) projects, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

Bloomberg first reported about the new unit.

Meta's co-founder and CEO has been on an AI hiring blitz as he faces fierce competition from rivals like OpenAI and Google. Earlier in June, the company said it would hire Wang, now Meta's chief AI officer, and some of his colleagues as part of a $14.3 billion investment into Scale AI.

Meta also hired Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, who was CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup created by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, CNBC earlier reported. Meta had attempted to buy Safe Superintelligence, but was rebuffed by Sutskever.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a recent podcast that Meta was recruiting AI researchers from his company, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million.

Meta technology chief Andrew Bosworth told CNBC's “Closing Bell Overtime” in an interview on June 20, that OpenAI was countering Meta's offers.

“The market is setting a rate here for a level of talent which is really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive,” Bosworth said.