Meta in Talks to Hire AI Investors Friedman and Gross, Partially Buy Out Their Venture Fund

Friedman and Gross are expected to help lead Meta’s AI efforts.

Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to hire artificial intelligence investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to help lead its AI efforts, The Information reported. Meta is also in discussion to partially buy out Friedman and Gross’ venture capital fund, NFDG, which holds stakes in top AI startups and is worth billions of dollars on paper.

If the talks are successful, Gross would leave Safe Superintelligence, which he co-founded with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever last year. At Meta, Gross is expected to work mostly on AI products while Friedman’s remit is expected to be broader. Both are expected to work closely with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, whose hiring by Meta was finalized last week in a $14.3 billion deal.

As part of the talks, Meta is discussing buying out a substantial portion of NFDG’s holdings and cashing out the fund’s limited partners in the process. The social media giant will have minority stakes in the startups that NFDG has invested in, which could include Safe Superintelligence, but it will not get information about and control over these startups.