August 27, 2025 – A major setback has come to light regarding Meta’s new and ambitious plan “superintelligence”. The company had launched Superintelligence Labs (MSL) in a high-profile manner just a few months ago, but now the company has suffered a major setback. Within just two months, three leading AI researchers have decided to leave Meta. These resignations have raised questions about the company’s ability to retain top talent for a long time amid growing global competition.
Zuckerberg’s aggressive recruitment campaign
This development comes at a time when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his big plan for superintelligence. He launched an aggressive campaign to recruit researchers as soon as he established Superintelligence Labs. According to media reports, Meta offered lucrative packages of up to nine-figures to lure top scientists from rival companies such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind. This indicated that the company was ready to go to any extent to strengthen its position.
Who all left Meta?
The three researchers who resigned from Meta are considered very important, whose experience and identity is very important in the AI industry.
- Avi Verma: Former OpenAI and Tesla researcher, who has now returned to OpenAI.
- Ethan Knight: This researcher had also joined OpenAI and xAI before and has now decided to return to OpenAI once again.
- Rishabh Agarwal: Canada-based researcher, who previously worked at Google Brain, DeepMind and Meta. He publicly announced his resignation on social media. Agarwal wrote in his message that this is a “tough decision” for him, but after working in big tech companies for a long time, he now feels “the pull to take on a different kind of risk”.
Meta’s official statement
Meta also reacted to this move of the researchers. Company spokesperson Dave Arnold described the resignations as part of the normal process. He said:
“During an intense recruiting process, some people will decide to stay in their current job rather than starting a new one.”
With this statement, the company tried to indicate that this development is not the result of any unusual situation, but it often happens during the complex process of recruitment.
Internal instability and strategic change
Meta’s AI division is already struggling with internal instability. In recent months, the company has reorganized its AI department several times. The teams were divided into four parts, so that research work could be organized. But this also led to disagreements within the organization and the perception that Meta is now moving away from fundamental and open-source research.
The establishment of Superintelligence Labs was a strategic move for the company to compete with leading companies like OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic. But some researchers who left the company believe that Meta’s real purpose is not to advance artificial general intelligence for humanity, but to create “AI slop” for its social media platforms.
Big message for the future
This development has made it clear that in today’s AI industry, only big salaries cannot stop talent. It is also important for researchers to work on projects that will have a deep and meaningful impact on human society in the future. These recent resignations from Meta have underlined that the talent war is no longer just a fight for money, but also a matter of researchers’ vision and their belief.
