Ilya Sutskever, one of the most respected minds in AI, will now lead Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the $32 billion firm he co-founded. He takes the CEO role after Meta hired away his co-founder and former CEO, Daniel Gross, in a stunning escalation of the AI talent war.
The leadership change, which Sutskever announced on X on July 3, caps a dramatic month that saw Meta first attempt to acquire the high-profile startup. When that failed, it hired Gross instead. The move is part of Meta’s costly strategy to fix its own AI stumbles by poaching top minds.
Sutskever confirmed Gross’s last day was June 29 and announced that fellow co-founder Daniel Levy will step up as president. He emphatically reaffirmed the company’s mission, stating on X, “You might have heard rumors of companies looking to acquire us. We are flattered by their attention but are focused on seeing our work through.”
He added, “We have the compute, we have the team, and we know what to do. Together we will keep building safe superintelligence,” signaling a clear intention to continue SSI’s independent research path.
A New Captain at the Helm of SSI
Sutskever’s ascent to CEO stabilizes SSI after the high-profile departure of its business-focused co-founder. The move places the company’s technical visionary in direct control of its future. SSI was founded in June 2024 with a singular focus on developing safe superintelligence.
The startup’s focused mission and star power attracted immense capital, including a $2 billion round in April 2025 that pushed its valuation to $32 billion with backing from Alphabet and Nvidia. Sutskever has been critical of the industry’s pure scaling approach, arguing, “We’ve reached peak data. There’s only one internet.”
I sent the following message to our team and investors:
—As you know, Daniel Gross’s time with us has been winding down, and as of June 29 he is officially no longer a part of SSI. We are grateful for his early contributions to the company and wish him well in his next…
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) July 3, 2025
Meta’s ‘Buy-or-Poach’ Playbook Forged in Crisis
Meta’s aggressive pursuit of SSI’s leadership is a direct response to a firestorm of internal challenges. The company has been hemorrhaging talent, losing 11 of the 14 original authors of its foundational Llama research paper. This brain drain was compounded by technical setbacks.
Development of its ambitious Llama 4 “Behemoth” model was postponed until late 2025 after it underperformed on key benchmarks. This turmoil fostered what anonymous Meta engineers described as a “panic mode,” with one stating, “Management is worried about justifying the massive cost of GenAI org.”, according to posts on the platform Blind.
On July 1, Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. This followed a pattern of being spurned on the acquisition trail, with failed attempts to take over generative video startup Runway and others.
The “acqui-hire” strategy was most visible in its investment for a 49% stake in data-labeling firm Scale AI, primarily to install Wang as its new lab head. The move backfired, shattering Scale AI’s neutrality and triggering an exodus from clients like Google.
Compounding the crisis, a bombshell report revealed a critical security failure at Scale AI that exposed confidential data from clients including Google and xAI. The discovery of such fundamental security flaws has turned a key strategic partnership into a significant liability for Meta.
The High-Stakes War for AI’s Top Minds
The raid on SSI’s leadership is the latest battle in a fierce war for talent between Meta and its chief rival, OpenAI. The conflict ignited when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of offering massive compensation to lure his developers. “I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped,” Altman remarked on a podcast.
While one newly hired researcher, Lucas Beyer, publicly called the claim of nine-figure signing bonuses “no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that’s fake news,” the conflict’s intensity is undeniable. The hires were surgical, with the poaching of reasoning expert Trapit Bansal designed to fill a known gap in Meta’s capabilities.
hey all, couple quick notes:
1) yes, we will be joining Meta.
2) no, we did not get 100M sign-on, that’s fake news.Excited about what’s ahead though, will share more in due time!
cc @__kolesnikov__ and @XiaohuaZhai.
— Lucas Beyer (bl16) (@giffmana) June 26, 2025
A leaked internal memo from OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, revealed the company was scrambling to “recalibrate comp”. In the memo, Chen expressed a raw sense of violation, writing, “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”
This costly battle for human capital is now dramatically reshaping the AI landscape. While Meta has assembled an impressive roster, its chaotic approach raises questions about its ability to build a stable foundation for AI leadership. The ultimate question remains whether this costly gambit can fix the deep-seated issues plaguing its AI ambitions, or if it has simply purchased a new set of challenges.
