Zuck Tried to Buy the Avengers of AI… Now He’s Stuck in a Billion-Dollar Hostage Situation

So remember earlier this summer when Zuck was handing out batsh*t crazy contracts to lure every OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic nerd he could find? And then last week, out of nowhere, Meta announced an AI hiring freeze. It was almost as if one of Meta’s board members got Zuck’s AI credit card bill in the mail and said, “listen buddy, I’m really worried about you.” Turns out there may be a fire burning in Meta’s AI kitchen… and the smoke is starting to leak out.

(Source: Financial Times)

What started as Zuckerberg’s billion-dollar idea (recruiting some of the biggest brains in AI with contracts that looked a lot like NFL quarterback deals) has turned into a messy experiment in what happens when you throw too much money at too many people, too fast. In Zuck’s head, the plan was genius. He was gonna spin up Meta Superintelligence Labs, raid rivals like OpenAI and DeepMind for talent, and rally everyone around a lofty “future of humanity” sermon. What he didn’t account for was the fallout from throwing generational wealth around like you’re making it rain in a strip club for AI geniuses.

Take Shengjia Zhao, one of the OG brains behind ChatGPT. Meta convinced him to join and immediately promoted him to chief AI scientist. But within days, Zhao was already threatening to walk out… and even signed paperwork to rejoin Daddy Altman at OpenAI. Meta freaked out, hit him with the “wait wait wait, we can fix this,” and handed him an even bigger role. As you can imagine, Zhao made out like a bandit.

Then there’s Rishabh Agarwal, a DeepMind researcher poached in April on a reported $1 million salary. Just four months in, he announced he was leaving. In his exit note on X, he quoted Zuck’s own famous line: “In a world that’s changing so fast, the biggest risk is not taking any risk.” In other words: thanks for the paycheck, I’ll take my talents elsewhere.

Other recruits didn’t even last a full quarter. Ethan Knight left in under a month. Avi Verma, another OpenAI hire, also didn’t stick. And these weren’t quiet Irish goodbyes either… nope, they were loud, messy exits plastered all over the news, right as Zuck was trying to stand on stage and convince Wall Street, “Trust me bro, we’re an AI company now.”

In addition to the rookies calling BS on Zuck’s vision (and running away with their bonus checks)... longtime veterans are peeling off too. Chaya Nayak, who spent nearly a decade running AI product at Meta, just jumped ship to OpenAI. Loredana Crisan, another ten-year veteran, left too. When both the big-money hires and the old guard start heading for the exits, it’s less “normal turnover” and more “we don’t buy what you’re selling.”

This all comes back to the basics of culture. Instead of building a mission-driven team, Zuck built a transactional one. Threaten to leave? Boom, you get a sexy new title. Don’t like your seat at the table? Push back a little and leadership folds. Clearly, the people Meta pulled in didn’t join because they believed in the “personal superintelligence” mission… they joined because the contracts were generational. And the second something felt inconvenient, they cashed out.

Which is why last week’s hiring freeze actually makes a lot more sense now. When your new lab loses talent this quickly, piling on more high-priced recruits isn’t the answer… it just adds to the churn. What Meta really needs is to stabilize the team it already bought. 

The restructuring into four divisions (research, product, infrastructure, and the awkwardly named “TBD Lab”) feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Oh and putting “to be determined” on the org chart of your flagship AI group doesn’t exactly scream confidence either. At best, it’s Meta trying to put labels on the chaos… at worst, it’s proof they’re still figuring this out on the fly.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Ironically Zuck thought he was buying himself a superteam. Instead, what he got was closer to a billion-dollar hostage situation, where his stars either ran back to OpenAI or stuck around just long enough to squeeze another concession out of leadership. And the irony is rich: the very people he recruited with eye-popping packages are now quoting his own “risk” mantra back at him as they head for the exits.

So yeah, that hiring freeze I wrote about last week? It’s actually not about budgeting for 2026… it’s an admission that Meta can’t keep papering over cultural cracks with more money. Unless Zuck can convince people this lab is more than just another paycheck factory, the superintelligence project won’t be remembered as a historic leap forward. It’ll be remembered as one of the priciest disasters in Silicon Valley history… parked right next to the Metaverse land rush, where some poor soul is still regretting dropping a million bucks on imaginary farmland.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta as mentioned in the article.