Meta Is in Talks to Hire Well-Known AI Investors and Buy-Out a Piece of Their Fund

Tech giant Meta Platforms (META) is in advanced talks to bring on well-known AI investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to help lead its AI projects, according to The Information. As part of the deal, Meta might also buy a piece of their venture capital fund, NFDG, which owns shares in several top AI startups. If the deal goes through, Gross would leave his startup, Safe Superintelligence, and would focus on AI products at Meta, while Friedman would have a broader role. Both are expected to work directly with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who just joined Meta in a $14.3 billion deal.

It is worth noting that Meta is looking to buy out a large portion of NFDG’s holdings, which could cost more than $1 billion. This would give Meta minority stakes in NFDG’s AI startups, but without control or access to their private information. Interestingly, Friedman and Gross have invested in popular startups like Perplexity and The Bot Company and had more than $2 billion in assets last year. This move is part of Meta’s efforts to catch up in the AI space. In fact, earlier this year, it delayed the launch of its Llama 4 model due to poor benchmark results and was criticized for exaggerating the model’s performance in testing.

As a result, Meta has been aggressively hiring AI talent by offering massive pay packages in order to attract people from companies like Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft-backed OpenAI (MSFT). However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized Meta’s approach by saying that it focuses too much on money instead of meaningful work. Still, Meta continues to shake up its AI team. In May, it split its generative AI group into two units: one for research and one for product development. Weeks later, it finalized the Scale AI deal. If Friedman and Gross join, they’ll be part of a small group of top leaders and will report to Wang.

Is Meta a Buy, Sell, or Hold?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on META stock based on 42 Buys, three Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average META price target of $707.16 per share implies that shares are almost fairly valued.

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