Meet Matt Deitke: 24-year-old AI whiz lured by Mark Zuckerberg with whopping $250 million offer

At this point Meta’s hiring spree to catch up in the artificial intelligence race isn’t something new. However, as Mark Zuckerberg and his band of geniuses aim for ‘superintelligence’, new details have emerged about how extravagantly Meta has paid for some of these talents and others who refused even better offers. 

While some like Mira Murati’s co-founder at Thinking Minds Lab, Andrew Tulloch, couldn’t be swayed by even $1.5 billion pay packages, others like former Apple AI models team head Ruoming Pang and Shengjia Zhao have jumped at the opportunity. 

A new name now joins the mix of young AI researchers Matt Deitke who has joined the newly set up Superintelligence Labs unit after a personal chat with Mark Zuckerberg, according to a report by The New York Times. 

While Deitke was initially offered a compensation of around $125 million in stock and cash over four years, the 24 year old AI researcher refused. After that Zuckerberg reportedly personally met with Deitke and returned to him with a revised offer of around $250 million over four years with up to $100 million to be paid in the first year itself. 

Similar reports of Zuckerberg meeting with other potential recruits have come in the past few weeks with the Meta CEO trying to get his company back on track in the AI race with the aim of building ‘superintelligence’ which refers to a hypothetical stage where AI beats even the most advanced human being faster than its rivals. In this attempt, Zuckerberg has poached talent from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Apple among other companies. 

In its earnings report released on Wednesday, Meta said that its capital expenditure will go up to $72 billion in 2025 from $30 billion just a year earlier. 

Who is Matt Deitke? 

Deitke is a recent dropout of a computer science Ph.D. programme at the University of Washington. He had previously moonlighted at a Seattle AI lab called the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. During his stay at the company, Deitke led the development of a project called Molmo which is an AI chatbot that juggles images, sounds and text similar to the kind of system Meta is trying to build. 

Deitke and several other Allen Institute colleagues founded an AI startup aimed at creating AI agents called Vercept. The company has around 10 employees and has raised $16.5 million from investors including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.