Mark Zuckerberg is looking for a few good brains.
The Meta Platforms (META) CEO has been going on a hiring binge as the Facebook parent raids the tech sector in the race to nail down the next and very biggest thing.
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“If anyone has been aggressive in chasing the future promise of AI technology, it has been Meta Platforms and the firm’s sometimes villainized, sometimes celebrated CEO Mark Zuckerberg,” TheStreet Pro’s Stephen Guilfoyle said in a recent column.
“One thing is certain: when Zuckerberg focuses on something, anything, he really gets after it,” the Wall Street veteran added.
For instance, Ruoming Pang, now the former head of AI modeling at Apple (AAPL) , is leaving the computer giant to take a position at Meta, according to Bloomberg.
Pang was overseeing Apple’s foundation models team, which has about 100 employees contributing to the development of the company’s large language models.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on a hiring binge.. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Meta CEO cites new era for humanity
He played a crucial role in leading Apple’s AI division, which was responsible for bringing features such as summaries, Priority Notifications and Genmoji.
Pang will reportedly manage Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs division, which is envisioned for the company’s AI development.
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Superintelligence refers to AI that surpasses human intelligence in all or most aspects, including creativity, problem-solving and social skills.
“As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo, AI Business reported. “I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.”
The new division would be led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, who joined Meta as its first chief AI officer. Zuckerberg described Wang as “the most impressive founder of his generation” in the memo.
Zuckerberg has successfully hired at least seven staffers from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, according to Wired, prompting Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, to send a note to staff saying it felt “as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”
Guilfoyle noted that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta Platforms had offered his high-end AI-focused employees signing bonuses of up to $100 million as part of a recruitment strategy.
“Meta’s CTO has since refuted claims about the size of these bonuses that Meta Platforms has supposedly been throwing around,” wrote Guilfoyle, whose career dates back to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1980s.
“That said, Meta ‘is definitely offering hefty multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers’ according to TechCrunch,” he added.
Meta, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads, also hired former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, who was CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup created by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, CNBC reported last month.
Shares of Meta Platforms, which is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on July 30, have climbed 23% this year and the stock has surged 36% from this time in 2024.
Wall Street veteran notes Meta revenue slow down
Roth Capital analyst Rohit Kulkarni raised the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms to $740 from $620 on July 8 and kept a buy rating on the shares ahead of its earnings report, according to The Fly.
Kulkarni said that he has a positive bias toward the broader ad ecosystem heading into earnings and believes that the easing uncertainty in macro and tariff environments is reflected in the stock’s current valuation.
Related: Google plans major AI shift after Meta’s surprising $14 billion move
The stock trades at a “premium” valuation and has had “fuzzy” year-to-date AI execution, though its product roadmap and WhatsApp monetization traction in third quarter guide can be potential incremental positives, the analyst said.
Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski boosted the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms to $783 from $664 and kept an overweight rating on the shares.
Gawrelski cited solid fundamentals, and said he is raising estimates on temporary tariff reprieves and healthy ad checks.
Meta leadership is taking decisive action to fortify its AI bets, the analyst said, adding that the market has received the investments favorably, but expectations for the returns are also rising.
Guilfoyle said Wall Street is looking for the company to report earnings of $5.86 on revenue of roughly $44.5 billion.
“This would compare well to the year-ago comp of $5.16 on revenue growth of more than 14%,” he said. “While 14% is not bad at all, this would continue a deceleration in revenue growth that Meta Platforms has experienced since early 2024.”
Of the 40 sell-side analysts covering Meta, Guilfoyle said, “20 have revised their earnings estimates for the quarter higher, while 20 have lowered their earnings estimates.”
“While relative strength is solid but not technically overbought, the stock’s daily MACD is a bit sloppy,” he said, referring to Moving Average Convergence Divergence, which is used to identify potential buy and sell signals in stock trading.
“For now, this name is a trade, not an investment,” Guilfoyle concluded.
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