Luis Poveda's AI Newsletter: July 7, 2025

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This week marked a pivotal moment in the AI industry as Meta launched its ambitious Superintelligence Labs with a massive talent acquisition spree, prompting OpenAI's Sam Altman to defend his company's mission-driven culture with the rallying cry that "missionaries will beat mercenaries." Meanwhile, Cloudflare introduced a groundbreaking Pay per Crawl marketplace that could fundamentally reshape how AI companies access training data, giving publishers unprecedented control over their content and creating new revenue streams in the AI-driven web economy.

Meta Launches Superintelligence Labs with $300 Million Talent Raids

Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a new AI division aimed at developing "personal superintelligence for everyone" and positioning Meta at the forefront of the AGI race. The initiative, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang as Chief AI Officer and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, consolidated Meta's existing AI teams including Llama and FAIR while establishing a dedicated lab for next-generation models. Meta successfully recruited at least seven researchers from OpenAI, offering compensation packages up to $300 million over four years, with some receiving over $100 million in first-year compensation. The new hires include key contributors to GPT-4o, ChatGPT, and other breakthrough models, representing one of the most aggressive talent acquisition campaigns in AI history.

• CNBC: Mark Zuckerberg creating Meta Superintelligence Labs. Read the memo

• WIRED: Here's What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent

Altman Fights Back: "Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries" in OpenAI Defense

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded forcefully to Meta's talent poaching campaign in a leaked internal memo, dismissing Meta's recruiting efforts as potentially leading to "very deep cultural problems" and emphasizing OpenAI's mission-driven approach over financial incentives. Altman revealed that Meta had to "go quite far down their list" of targets and failed to secure their top choices for key positions like Chief Scientist, despite months of aggressive recruitment efforts. The CEO defended OpenAI's culture and research roadmap while announcing compensation reviews for the entire research organization, arguing that OpenAI's singular focus on AGI development gives it a sustainable advantage over competitors who treat AI as "an instrumental goal to some other mission".

• WIRED: Sam Altman Slams Meta's AI Talent-Poaching Spree

• TechRepublic: Sam Altman Slams Meta's Hiring Tactics as 'Distasteful'

Cloudflare Disrupts AI Training Data Economy with Pay per Crawl Marketplace

Cloudflare launched its Pay per Crawl marketplace, a groundbreaking platform that allows website owners to charge AI companies for each instance of content scraping, fundamentally altering the economics of AI training data. The service, launching in private beta, enables publishers to set individual rates for different AI crawlers, block them entirely, or allow free access on a case-by-case basis. Major publishers including Conde Nast, TIME, The Associated Press, and Fortune have signed on to support the initiative, which comes as new data reveals stark imbalances in the current system - OpenAI's crawler scraped websites 1,700 times for every referral it provided, while Anthropic's ratio reached 73,000 to one. Cloudflare also announced that all new domains will now block AI crawlers by default, requiring explicit permission for access.

• TechCrunch: Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping

• Reuters: Cloudflare launches tool to help website owners monetize AI bot crawler access

Zuckerberg vs. Altman: Competing for the Future of AI

The escalating competition for AI talent, especially between Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, feels unprecedented, perhaps reminiscent of a digital-age Cold War. We’re entering an "AI war", where the true value lies not just in computing power, but in the intellect, experience, and vision of top researchers and academics.

I believe Sam Altman has a point: you can’t build a world-class AI company with just money. As a seasoned founder and company builder, Altman knows what he's talking about. But Zuckerberg’s fear of being left behind in this race might be even more powerful than his financial resources.

On another note, Cloudflare’s new pay-per-crawl tool is a fascinating and timely attempt to monetize the web in the AI era. Traditional models like ads and paywalls are showing signs of fatigue, and it’s clear that new monetization strategies are urgently needed.

The AI industry is experiencing unprecedented upheaval as the race for artificial general intelligence intensifies. Meta's bold Superintelligence Labs initiative and record-breaking compensation packages signal a new phase of competition where talent acquisition has become as crucial as technological innovation. Meanwhile, Cloudflare's Pay per Crawl marketplace represents a potential paradigm shift toward a more equitable AI economy, where content creators can finally monetize their contributions to AI development. As these developments unfold, the industry faces fundamental questions about sustainable business models, ethical talent practices, and the fair distribution of AI's economic benefits across the digital ecosystem.

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