Meta AI Chief Clashes With CEO Mark Zuckerberg Over AI Strategy: Report
The difference in opinion became clear during an internal meeting.
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[Image source: Chetan Jha/MITSMR Middle East]
Meta’s bid for AI leadership is testing its internal alignment, with tensions emerging between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its $14 billion AI hire, Alexandr Wang. The Financial Times reports on the exciting partnership showing signs of strain.
The Strategic Bet
Wang, who founded Scale AI at 19, was brought in as head of the newly formed division, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), in June 2025, with Meta taking a 49% stake in the startup for $14.3 billion.
”We will deepen the work we do together, producing data for AI models, and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” Meta had said in a statement back then.
Meta’s investment in Scale AI was a strategic move to leverage Scale AI’s expertise in data-annotation pipelines and scalable training systems, which are crucial for next-generation AI models.
With the investment, Meta aimed to gain an advantage over its competitors, OpenAI and Google.
Contrasting Opinions
A key issue at the centre is Zuckerberg’s leadership style, which is known to be a highly involved, tried-and-tested approach that has worked for the tech giant in the past.
The knee-deep style has left Wang and team feeling that too much control from the top is slowing down their work.
The AI chief wants an independent, focused approach to build strong AI technology, while Zuckerberg is focused on developing AI tools that can be deployed quickly across Meta’s apps to improve ads, content, and the user experience.
This difference in opinion became clear during an internal meeting where Meta senior leaders suggested using data from Facebook and Instagram to quickly build AI features, while Wang disagreed, arguing that the company should focus on creating world-class AI models before deploying them into products.
Now, Meta is left to choose between investing in long-term research and short-term business goals, leading employees to worry that the disagreement may slow down progress as the AI competition intensifies.
