Mark Zuckerberg says AI researchers are joining Meta not for big salaries but for this reason

Zuckerberg

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed why top artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are flocking to Meta — and it’s not just about big paychecks. In a recent interview with The Information, Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that Meta is simply “poaching researchers because of bags of money.”

“Lol, that’s mostly inaccurate,” Zuckerberg said.

Instead, he claims researchers are joining Meta’s newly-formed Superintelligence Labs (MSL) for the opportunity to build cutting-edge AI systems, or as he put it, “to build god.”

According to Zuckerberg, Meta offers something most other companies can’t: the ability to work in small, highly independent teams, report directly to senior leadership (sometimes even to Zuckerberg himself), and get access to what he calls “infinite GPUs.”

“Researchers told us they want maximum GPUs,” Zuckerberg explained. “So we said, how about the smallest teams, direct access to me, and unlimited compute power?” Unsurprisingly, many researchers quickly jumped on board.

Meta is reportedly building massive compute infrastructure to back up these promises. A 1-gigawatt (GW) Prometheus cluster is expected to go live in 2026, while an even bigger Hyperion cluster will eventually scale beyond 5GW. Zuckerberg claims Meta will have “the most compute per researcher on the planet.”

With such computing power and autonomy, it seems Meta’s AI labs are becoming a dream destination for ambitious AI researchers — and not just because of the salary.