Meta Doubles Down on ‘Superintelligence’ Investment. It’s Good News for AI Stocks.

Meta Platforms is spending billions on hiring AI researchers and building data centers to support the technology. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Meta Platforms artificial-intelligence spending frenzy isn’t over, according to one of its most senior executives. That’s a boost for the AI trade as a whole.

“We are truly only investing more and more into Meta Superintelligence Labs as a company. Any reporting to the contrary of that is clearly mistaken,” Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, said in a social-media post on X late Thursday.

Wang is the head of Meta’s efforts to develop what it terms “personal superintelligence.” He was formerly founder of Scale AI, a data-labeling start-up of which Meta acquired a 49% share for $14 billion earlier this year.

His comment came following a report that Meta had frozen hiring in its AI division from The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Meta has hired dozens of AI researchers from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Amazon.com -backed Anthropic, and Alphabet Google DeepMind, in recent months while offering pay of up to $100 million, according to OpenAI’s Altman. Many of those now report to Wang.

Despite the Journal’s report, it appears that the recruiting spree might not be entirely over. Meta is hiring Frank Chu, an Apple executive who was in charge of AI teams focused on cloud infrastructure, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Its shares were up 1.4% in early trading Friday.

Meta’s recruitment spending might be impressive but by far the larger part of its AI investment is going on infrastructure, chiefly data centers filled with chips from the likes of Nvidia. That also appears to still be ramping up. Meta has signed a cloud-computing deal worth more than $10 billion over six years with Google, according to multiple reports on h Thursday.

Apart from Nvidia, Barron’s has recently highlighted Arista Networks and Astera Labs as beneficiaries of the data center boom.

All in all, it’s a reminder that the AI trade is still alive, despite OpenAI’s Atman warning of a potential bubble, as well as an MIT report concluding that 95% of generative AI initiatives at companies are failing to achieve rapid revenue growth

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com