Daniel Gross, the former Chief Executive and co-founder of Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), has become a member of the newly formed Superintelligence Lab of Meta Platforms, which marks another important movement in the current AI talent war.
Gross is going to work on artificial intelligence products under the super intelligence unit of Meta, confirmed his spokesperson Lulu Meservey. The development follows the recent restructuring of Meta from its AI division and a flurry of high-profile employees aimed at pushing the boundaries of artificial general intelligence (AGI), AI systems that are capable of human level or superior cognition.
Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of Gross near SSI and the former chief scientist at OpenAi, announced on Friday that Gross had declined from his role at the AI startup. Sutskever will now assume the position of CEO at SSI. While Gross apart from the directly mentioning of Meta in his farewell post at X, he wrote: “The future of the company is very rosy and I expect miracles to follow.”
The departure of Gross from SSI comes only a few months after the startup of the Stealth Mode was launched with a focus on building safe and aligned super intelligence. His move to Meta is seen as part of a broader recruitment strategy that is personally led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Reports suggest that Zuckerberg actively demanded the manager AI spirits, even inviting potential employees for his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe.
Gross is not the only prominent figure who has joined Meta's super intelligence efforts. Nat Friedman, former CEO of Github and the old Gross employee in venture capital company NFDG, has also registered. He now leads the superintelligence initiative of Meta together with the former scale AI Chief Executive Alexandr Wang.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Meta offered to gain a minority interest in the funds of NFDG, a venture company, partly founded by Gross and Friedman, who may deepen the partnership.
Gross's career includes various roles in the technical landscape of Silicon Valley. He was co-founder of Cue, an AI-driven search that was taken over by Apple in 2013. After the acquisition, he worked until 2017 on Apple's AI and search initiatives and later served as a partner at Startup Accelerator Y Combinator.
(With Bloomberg entrances)
