Zuckerberg’s Meta Bleeds High-Priced AGI Talent as Top Researchers Jump Ship

Meta's artificial general intelligence ambitions hit a major roadblock as the company's highest-paid AGI specialists begin exiting—just months after Zuckerberg's billion-dollar hiring spree.

The Brain Drain Accelerates

Insiders report at least three lead AGI researchers have departed since June, with compensation packages reportedly exceeding $2M annually. These weren't just coders—they were the architects Meta needed to compete in the AI arms race.

Culture Clash or Better Offers?

Sources suggest the exodus stems from frustration with Meta's notorious bureaucracy clashing with the breakneck pace required for AGI development. When you're trying to build god-like intelligence, corporate red tape tends to kill momentum—and patience.

Zuck's Bet Backfires?

The departures raise serious questions about whether throwing Silicon Valley salaries at complex problems actually works. Meanwhile, Wall Street barely noticed—because when your metaverse division burns $15B quarterly, what's another few million in wasted talent acquisition?

Meta scientist exits, quotes Zuckerberg on risk

Rishabh Agarwal, hired from Google DeepMind on a reported $1 million salary, joined Meta in April and said on August 25 that this would be his final week at the lab.

This is my last week at @AIatMeta. It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density. But after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk.…

— Rishabh Agarwal (@agarwl_) August 25, 2025

In a post on X, Agarwal said the choice was hard given the “talent and compute density” at MSL, but that he felt drawn to “a different kind of risk.” He also quoted Zuckerberg: “In a world that’s changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk.”

Reports pointed to restructurings, changing priorities and tight oversight at the highest level. The company recently divided its AI staff into four teams, creating more uncertainty inside MSL.

DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis told Lex Fridman that frontier researchers want to “help influence how AGI plays out and steward the technology safely into the world,” rather than chase salaries.

Anthropic cofounder Benjamin Mann put it bluntly that “My best case at Anthropic is we affect the future of humanity. My best case at Meta is we make money.”

OpenAI gains from Meta’s losses

OpenAI is benefiting from the departures. In addition to Verma and Knight, longtime Meta executive Chaya Nayak has joined OpenAI to work on special initiatives. OpenAI had criticized Meta’s recruiting style as “distasteful,” yet it is now taking in former Meta staff who say mission fit matters more than compensation.

Meta has invested heavily to narrow the gap with competitors in AGI, tapping former Scale AI chief Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman for leadership posts. Even so, the latest resignations indicate that big pay packages alone may not build or keep a unified frontier-AI group.

For Zuckerberg, there is an irony in presenting himself as a bold risk-taker, as his hires now cite his own words as they exit. Whether Meta can stabilize its superintelligence push or keep shedding talent will set the tone for its next phase in the AI competition.

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