Mark Zuckerberg has recently shifted into what insiders call "founder mode," a leadership approach characterized by deep personal involvement in operational decisions and strategic initiatives.1 This mode represents a return to the principles that drove Meta's early success: moving fast, being bold, and focusing on impact rather than short-term profits.2 In this renewed founder-centric approach, Zuckerberg is stripping away layers of middle management to create a "flatter is faster" organization, ruthlessly prioritizing core initiatives, and reemphasizing Meta's engineering-driven culture.3

The shift to "founder mode 2.0" is evident in Zuckerberg's hands-on recruitment efforts, including personally hosting a WhatsApp group called "Recruiting Party" where he and top executives scout for talent.1 This leadership style extends beyond AI initiatives to broader company strategy, including content moderation policies where he's pushing back against external regulation while framing changes as a restoration of free expression.4 By many accounts, this approach has positioned Meta as the most innovative among internet-era incumbents, particularly in open-source AI models and their surrounding developer ecosystems.3

The AI talent war has reached unprecedented intensity, with Meta and other tech giants offering extraordinary compensation packages to secure top researchers. Companies are serving up annual salaries exceeding $1 million, accelerated stock-vesting schedules, and even attempting to poach entire engineering teams in their quest for AI dominance.1 Mark Zuckerberg has personally courted researchers at Google's DeepMind, while Meta has reportedly made job offers to AI researchers without conducting interviews and relaxed its longstanding practice of not increasing compensation for employees threatening to leave.23

This aggressive recruitment has created ripple effects across the tech industry. Tesla, facing poaching attempts from OpenAI, has increased compensation for its AI engineering team in what Elon Musk described as "the craziest talent war I've ever seen."34 While top AI researchers at Meta typically earn $1-2 million annually, OpenAI recruiters have told some Google AI researchers they could earn $5-10 million per year.3 This escalation occurs even as Meta simultaneously cuts 5% of its workforce in other areas, strategically eliminating positions to create headcount for hiring "the strongest talent" in AI.5

Meta's superintelligence initiative represents the company's most ambitious AI endeavor yet, aiming to develop systems that surpass human cognitive capabilities across all domains. Zuckerberg's vision extends beyond artificial general intelligence (AGI) to achieve what the company internally refers to as "superintelligence"—a theoretical form of AI that would far exceed human intelligence in problem-solving, reasoning, creativity, and emotional understanding.1 This pursuit comes amid reported frustration with the mixed reception of Meta's Llama 4 model and delays in launching its advanced "Behemoth" version.23

The formation of this secretive lab raises significant ethical considerations, particularly regarding control mechanisms for such advanced AI systems. While Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has publicly expressed his belief that humans will maintain a "boss-staff relationship" with superintelligent AI,1 the broader AI community continues to debate potential existential risks if superintelligent systems develop values misaligned with humanity's.4 Meta's ultimate goal is to integrate these advanced capabilities across its product ecosystem, including social media platforms, communication tools, chatbots, and AI-powered devices like Ray-Ban smart glasses.15

The term "superintelligence" has evolved significantly since its first documented use in 1822, when it referred to "divine superintelligence" or God as the creator of intelligent design1. By 1839, the meaning shifted toward "the capacity to apprehend what is beyond the normal range of human intelligence," and around 1876, it settled into its modern meaning of "greater than normal intelligence"1. The concept entered science fiction literature as early as 1932 in John W. Campbell's "The Last Evolution," though the term itself first appeared in English news in 1977 regarding Algis Budrys' novel Michaelmas, which presciently depicted an "immensely powerful self-aware artificial intelligence"12.

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom later formalized the definition as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest"3. The concept gained significant traction through the writings of influential thinkers like John von Neumann, Vernor Vinge, and Ray Kurzweil, who explored the technological creation of super intelligence and its implications for humanity2. J.D. Beresford's 1911 novel The Hampdenshire Wonder is considered the first fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, emerging after Darwin's evolutionary theories had shifted Western thought away from the fixed "Great Chain of Being" hierarchy toward concepts of species progression and development4.