Report: Meta Aims to Hire AI Investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross

Meta is reportedly in talks to hire artificial intelligence (AI) investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross and partially buy out their venture capital fund, NFDG.

The company aims to have Friedman and Gross help lead its AI efforts, The Information reported Wednesday (June 18), citing unnamed sources.

Meta did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

According to the report, NFDG has invested in AI startups like Perplexity, The Bot Company and Safe Superintelligence. If Meta partially buys out the VC fund, the company would have minority stakes in the startups but would not get information about them, the report said.

Gross, in addition to his involvement with the venture capital fund, is a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence. If he joins Meta, he would leave that position, the report said.

Friedman is a member of an advisory group that consults with Meta executives about the company’s AI efforts, per the report.

This report came about a week after data-labeling startup Scale AI announced that it received a “significant investment” from Meta and that its founder, Alexandr Wang, will join Meta to work on that company’s AI efforts.

It was reported June 11 that Meta was poaching some top engineers from tech firms for its artificial general intelligence (AGI) team. Meta is looking to hire about 50 people for the team, including a chief scientist who will oversee it.

On June 10, it was reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recruiting from a pool of AI researchers and engineers who had met with him at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto in recent weeks. That report said that while Zuckerberg has been clear about making AI a priority for Meta, he has gone into “founder mode,” with an increasingly hands-on approach to management.

It was reported Wednesday that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta was offering nine-figure signing bonuses to poach his company’s workers.

In May, it was reported that Meta was reorganizing its generative AI team to accelerate rollouts of products and features. The reorganization aimed to enhance the company’s competitive edge in the rapidly evolving AI industry.