‘Superintelligence’: The holy grail of AI + $10 million salary? What’s in it for you 

Forget signing bonuses and company swag — Meta is going full Avengers-mode assembling a 50-person team to chase “superintelligence”.

And the paychecks? Absolutely ludicrous. 

Think seven to nine figures. Yes, nine. As in, potentially a hundred million dollars (that’s $100,000,000) or more.

Tech industry speculation about paychecks has gone on overdrive.

Leading the charge is none other than Meta CEO and hoodie-wearing visionary Mark Zuckerberg, now 41, who’s personally summoning the brightest minds in AI to private meetings at his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe like a tech Gandalf gathering his fellowship.

Bloomberg reports that Zuckerberg is on a war path to make Meta the first company to cook up something much bigger: a secret “superintelligence” lab. 

“Superintelligence” what? 

Well, it’s nothing less than creating AI that outthinks you, me, and every Nobel laureate combined.

TL;DR: It’s AI that doesn't just imitate humans, but outsmarts us in everything: memory, reasoning, creativity, and, probably, assembling IKEA furniture without leftover parts.

Superintelligence: The “Holy Grail’ of AI

The idea of superintelligence isn’t new. 

Philosophers like Nick Bostrom have been warning (and dreaming) about it for years. He defines it as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest” (Bostrom, 2014). 

Once we get there, some say it could usher in a golden age—others say...Skynet.

Skynet, of course, is familiar to Terminator junkies. It’s the fictional character that is a powerful, self-aware AI that leads a war against humanity. It is a "group mind" or "superintelligence" that controls a network of machines. 

In 2016, computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy argued that controlling such entities would be like trying to keep a rocket-propelled tiger in a cardboard box: “Superintelligent machines will be difficult, if not impossible, to fully align with human values”.

But Zuckerberg? He's all in.

“The AI talent wars are absolutely ridiculous,” posted venture capitalist Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures on X, noting that even with Meta offering over $2 million a year, researchers are still being poached by OpenAI and Anthropic like it’s free-agent season, or the transfer craze season is on.

Zuck is keen to be the first to build “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) — basically, robots smart enough to rival (or outthink) humans.

And with rivals like OpenAI sprinting toward AGI too, this high-stakes tech race is just getting started.

Well, tech industry rumours have it Zuckerberg wasn’t too thrilled with the mixed reviews surrounding Meta’s latest AI brainchild, Llama 4. 

So he’s taking matters into his own hands, planning to personally recruit about 50 top-tier experts — including a new head of AI research.

How Meta plans to win the AI ‘Hunger Games’

Zuckerberg's strategy is straightforward: Pay up, gear up, move fast. 

The New York Times reports that select members of Meta’s upcoming Superintelligence Avengers squad are being handed compensation packages between seven and nine figures. That’s generational wealth for tinkering with neural nets.

Among the reported recruits: Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI, a data-labelling startup whose customers include Nvidia, Tesla and the US military. Scale AI has become an infrastructure backbone for the AI boom. 

Meta forks out $10 billion for Scale AI

Meta is reportedly looking to invest a jaw-dropping $10 billion into Scale AI — a move that would be its biggest external investment ever.

Wang and other Scale AI employees are expected to join Meta's Team Superintelligence once the deal is sealed.

New desks?

Back at Meta HQ in Menlo Park, things are literally shifting. Desks are being reorganised so that the Superintelligence crew sits close to Zuck himself. 

Call it “founder mode,” or maybe just “ZuckVision.” 

Either way, it's clear: For Zuckerberg,  this isn’t some side hustle; it’s the mission.

And the timing couldn’t be more intense. 

Meta has reportedly been losing top AI minds to rivals — even as over a billion users interact with Meta AI every month across its apps, according to Zuckerberg.

Meanwhile, the company’s stock is up 17% year-to-date, so investors aren’t complaining.

If Meta’s moonshot pays off, the next AI breakthrough could be what OpenAI’s Sam Altman calls a “singularity”.

So, imagine a superintelligent AI evolving beyond chatbots into a truly adaptive personal assistant — managing your schedule, relationships, learning goals, and even health in ways humans can’t.

Potential impact:

Bonus: Could outperform Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, becoming the go-to interface for daily life.

Perhaps the next level: Meta integrates superintelligent AI into immersive learning platforms — including VR/AR via its Meta Quest headsets.

Impact:

Bonus: Meta positions itself as the global AI university, disrupting traditional schooling models.

And this could be just the beginning of a wild new, AGI-driven world...