US technology giant Meta, which is on a hiring spree of highly talented AI researchers, has lured one more AI prodigy, Matt Deitke, in an impressive $250 million deal. 24-year-old Dietke is the co-founder of AI startup Vercept. He had reportedly refused Meta’s earlier $125 million offer but changed his mind after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s direct appeal.
Zuckerberg personally met Dietke and revised the earlier offer to $250 million with $100 million upfront in stock and cash. This major hire happens at a time when Meta is pushing hard to lead the AI field in the coming years.
Before he joined Meta, Deitke helped start Vercept, an AI company based in Seattle with a big goal: to create self-driving AI agents that don’t wait for commands. Unlike regular AI tools that need prompts to perform tasks, Vercept’s systems can detect goals, explore digital spaces, take actions, and adapt to dynamic environments, working like digital employees who can think for themselves.
The company was launched in late 2023 with ten team members and got $16.5 million in initial funding. Reputed names like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have backed it. Vercept caught people’s attention by pushing the boundaries of what AI could do outside the lab.
Vercept builds AI agents that can work independently across various platforms—they can browse websites, extract information, utilize tools, and adapt their behavior in response to changes in their environment. The aim is to create AI that doesn’t just respond, but initiates. These skills helped Deitke and his new company stand out in a field packed with AI players.
Before Vercept, Deitke worked at the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), where he was leading the development of Molmo, an AI system that understands text, images, and sound. Molmo marked a significant advancement in AI design. It went beyond models based on language by combining visual and auditory reasoning.
This work won him an Outstanding Paper Award at the well-known NeurIPS 2022 conference. The judges chose his paper from over 10,000 entries. The system’s ability to reason and process sensory data in real-time matched Meta’s goals. They too wanted to create AI that was more aware and human-like.
Deitke’s hiring is a cornerstone addition to Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab (MSL)—a major initiative launched in early 2025 to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). MSL is headed by Alexandr Wang, co-founder of Scale AI, who was handpicked by Zuckerberg to lead Meta’s AI transformation.
Wang’s induction marked a strategic shift. Known for his data-first approach and rapid experimentation, Wang is tasked with assembling an elite team to rival OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. Meta has reportedly spent over $1 billion recruiting top researchers, including Apple’s former AI lead Ruoming Pang, whose package also crossed $200 million.
