PALO ALTO/TEL AVIV: The battle for top AI talent has claimed another high-profile casualty—this time at Safe Superintelligence (SSI), where co-founder Ilya Sutskever has stepped in to lead the company following the exit of CEO Daniel Gross to Meta.

Gross, a noted entrepreneur and investor, has joined Meta Platforms to head its AI products division, sources told Reuters. His departure adds fuel to an escalating recruitment war among tech giants eager to dominate the next era of artificial intelligence.

Meta had also attempted to recruit Sutskever and acquire SSI, which was last valued at US$32 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

"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," Sutskever said in a post on X.

Founded last year, SSI aims to develop advanced AI systems that safely surpass human intelligence. The company raised $1 billion in cash to fund its mission and has positioned itself as a key player in the safe AI space.

Sutskever, formerly chief scientist at OpenAI, left the ChatGPT maker in 2023 after a turbulent leadership crisis that saw CEO Sam Altman briefly ousted and then reinstated. Sutskever had co-founded OpenAI and played a central role in both its scientific breakthroughs and internal power struggles.

Meanwhile, Meta is doubling down on its AI strategy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently launched a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs to consolidate the company's AI initiatives after a string of setbacks, including issues with its Llama 4 model and several key departures.

The new unit will be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who have emerged as power players in Silicon Valley's AI ecosystem. Meta also invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, further underlining its commitment to building cutting-edge models.

Gross and Friedman have been collaborators for a long time. They co-founded the venture capital firm NFDG, an acronym based on their initials, which has backed some of the most talked-about startups in the AI and productivity space, including SSI, Perplexity, and Figma.

Gross's track record in AI dates back more than a decade. In 2013, he sold his previous startup, Cue, to Apple, where he later led projects in machine learning and artificial intelligence as a director.