Mark Zuckerberg's Biggest Mistake as Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg once admitted he made a costly mistake in handling his partnership with Eduardo Saverin, which cost him billions of dollars. He learned from it and pushed forward, saying "it's fine." The mistake occurred when Zuckerberg didn't understand vesting schedules, leading to tension with Saverin. Saverin sued Zuckerberg, but retained his title as co-founder and walked away with a significant fortune when Facebook went public. Today, Saverin is a billionaire with no hard feelings towards Zuckerberg.

Meta's aggressive AI talent acquisition, spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg, is causing internal strife. High compensation packages offered to external hires have sparked resentment among existing AI teams, who feel undervalued. Despite significant investment in AI infrastructure, Meta's models still trail competitors, leading to a divided company with uncertain roles for many employees.

Meta's AI hiring spree has not only upset rival companies but also created issues within the company. As reported by Business Insider, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s idea to dominate the field of artificial intelligence is creating internal unrest. The huge compensation packages offered by Zuckerberg to hire AI talent from rival companies have sparked resentment among the existing employees. This latest controversy is followed by the recent failed attempt by Meta CEO to hire Mira Murati, former OpenAI CTO and founder of Thinking Machines Lab, with a reported $1 billion offer. After Murati declined the offer, Meta launched a “full-scale raid” on her startup, offering compensation packages ranging from $200 million to $500 million to other researchers at her startup.

Some insiders have informed the publication that the huge compensation packages offered by Meta CEO to hire AI talent has created a morale crisis with the exiting AI teams at Meta. One employee described the situation as feeling like “Zuckerberg told GenAI employees they had failed,” implying that internal talent was being sidelined in favor of high-profile recruits. On the other hand, another senior executive at a rival AI firm told Fores that Meta’s present AI staff “largely didn’t meet their hiring bar,” adding, “Meta is the Washington Commanders of tech companies. They massively overpay for okay-ish AI scientists and then civilians think those are the best AI scientists in the world because they are paid so much”.

Meta’s AI gamble and Superintelligence mission
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already committed more than $10 billion annually to AGI development. As part of this the company will focus on building custom chips, data centres and a fleet of 600,000 GPUs. However, despite all these efforts Meta’s AI models including Llama 4 still lag behind rivals such has OpneAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5.The company on the other hand, has successfully managed to hire some top-talent from rival firms including Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of ChatGPT, and Alexandr Wang of Scale AI.Zuckerberg also defended his decision of hiring top AI talent at huge compensation packages. Meta CEO argued that the massive spending on top talent is a small fraction of the company's overall investment in AI infrastructure. He has also reportedly said that a small, elite team is the most effective way to build a breakthrough AI system, suggesting that "you actually kind of want the smallest group of people who can fit the whole thing in their head."However, this strategy created a divided within the company as the new hires are being brought in for a "Manhattan Project" style effort, many long-standing employees in other AI departments feel sidelined, with their projects losing momentum and their roles becoming uncertain.

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/this-is-like-mark-zuckerberg-telling-genai-employees-they-had-failed-and-tension-at-meta-over-zuckerbergs-big-money-offers-as-they-upset-existing-ai-researchers/articleshow/123319814.cms