Meta Eyes AI Power Move: Poaching Top Investors & Snapping Up Fund Stakes in Bold Tech Play
Meta's latest chess move? Raiding the AI talent vault—and rewriting the rules of tech investment.
The social giant is reportedly in advanced talks to hire marquee-name AI investors while negotiating a slice of their fund. No half-measures here—Zuckerberg's playing for keeps.
Why this matters:
- Talent grab: Securing top-tier AI minds could accelerate Meta's LLM ambitions overnight - Strategic leverage: Controlling fund stakes means influence over tomorrow's AI unicorns - Vertical integration: From research to deployment, Meta wants every link in the chain
Wall Street's take? 'Another meta-morphosis for a company that still can't decide if it's building the metaverse or chasing AI hype.' But when the tech titans play monopoly, the house always wins—even if shareholders can't read the rulebook.
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It is worth noting that Meta is looking to buy out a large portion of NFDG’s holdings, which could cost more than $1 billion. This would give Meta minority stakes in NFDG’s AI startups, but without control or access to their private information. Interestingly, Friedman and Gross have invested in popular startups like Perplexity and The Bot Company and had more than $2 billion in assets last year. This MOVE is part of Meta’s efforts to catch up in the AI space. In fact, earlier this year, it delayed the launch of its Llama 4 model due to poor benchmark results and was criticized for exaggerating the model’s performance in testing.
As a result, Meta has been aggressively hiring AI talent by offering massive pay packages in order to attract people from companies like Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft-backed OpenAI (MSFT). However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized Meta’s approach by saying that it focuses too much on money instead of meaningful work. Still, Meta continues to shake up its AI team. In May, it split its generative AI group into two units: one for research and one for product development. Weeks later, it finalized the Scale AI deal. If Friedman and Gross join, they’ll be part of a small group of top leaders and will report to Wang.
Is Meta a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on Meta stock based on 42 Buys, three Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average META price target of $707.16 per share implies that shares are almost fairly valued.
